in to say something even stronger. He told Milly so, and rose her hopes a good deal; but Steggles also told her that she needn't get excited about it, because her father would never let her marry a chap in the mercantile marine, and that sailors have a wife in every port. This was that same Steggles who did many things at Merivale in the past, but he was now exceedingly old, and expected at any time to be taken away. Many believed he was nearly eighteen, but he had nothing much to show it except experience.

The first thing to do was to give the parrot a name, and Milly told us in triumph that she had made the Doctor call it 'Joe.' Of course this was the Christian name of Johnson maximus, though I believe the Doctor had quite forgotten that. Anyway, 'Joe' is a very good name for a parrot, and everybody got very fond of him, and old Briggs lectured on him and told us that parrots reach a great age, and have often been known to live a hundred years and more, owing to their healthy diet and the number of bites they take to each mouthful, and their habit of never worrying whatever happens. Old Briggs himself is frightfully keen about fruit and nuts and such things, and I believe, in secret, he hopes he'll live a hundred years too. But nobody else does. Steggles discovered a likeness between 'Joe' and old Briggs. They shut their eyes in the same way certainly, but 'Joe's' eyes are like grey diamonds, and old Briggs's, through many years of looking through microscopes at seeds, and bits of seaweeds, and stones, and so on, have got a sort of film over them, and are not up to much now, even with two pairs of spectacles to help them.

Well, 'Joe' was as good a parrot as ever you saw, and there is no doubt that he would have outlived everybody at Merivale and got to be a sort of heirloom in Dr. Dunstan's family, if he had been spared; but after he had been there tw