well boy!” said Otto, with a happy sigh. “You’re very bright and clever, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no,” began Sonny Boy, but Lena touched his foot again.

“The Plummers are called a smart family,” said Sonny Boy firmly, although his cheeks burned. “My brother Tom and my sister Trixie are very clever.”

“Of course you couldn’t have trained those mice if you hadn’t been very clever,” said Otto.

“Those mice have done him good. I’ve never seen him so bright,” whispered the matron. “They’ve done all the children good!”

“And although I went away off to Uncle Fritz’s to get the parrot for him, he says he doesn’t like a parrot,” whispered Lena.

“You like a parrot, don’t you?” said Otto, eagerly, to Sonny Boy.

“I never was very well acquainted with one before. I think this one has a fine voice,” said Sonny Boy politely.

“You like her better than you do the mice, don’t you? You’ll swap, won’t you?” said Otto.

Now this, thought Sonny Boy, was hard! And what would they say at home? Trixie herself had trained the big mouse with the black spots on his ears that they called Admiral Cervera, and Tom would never be willing that Hobson should go out of the family!

“‘JUST THINK! HE NEVER HAS HAD ONE GOOD TIME.’”

But Sonny Boy’s heart ached with pity for the poor, humpbacked, shrunken fellow, whose face looked like a little old man’s. And Lena leaned over Sonny Boy’s shoulder and whispered:

“Just think! He never has had one good time!” she said.

“You can have them!” said Sonny Boy, although he had to swallow a great lump in his throat.

He got away as soon as he could then, for fear he should cry, Otto making him promise that he would come again just as soon as he could.

The delightful little glow at Sonny Boy’s heart, such as you always feel when you have made any one happy, was queerly mixed with the grief of losing his white mice.

When he got to the entrance door he found that Polly had been shut up in a dark closet, because she whooped and shouted so that the boy in buttons had not been able to keep her out upon the grounds.

When Sonny Boy took her again into his arms and started to go back, just as he had come away, he almost wished that Aunt Kate had borrowed some other one of the Plummers!

Polly was so lively on the way back to the city that Sonny Boy didn’t dare to take her into a passenger-car. The smoking-car happened to be almost empty, and the conductor said he would better go in there.

Polly didn’t like the empty smoking-car. She wished to be where there were plenty of people to admire her, and she showed her displeasure by making a dreadful noise. She barked and miaowed and cackled and crowed, and squealed and lowed and whinneyed and brayed and squawked and roared and growled, until one would have thought the smoking-car was nothing less than Noah’s Ark. A crowd of people came rushing into the car, and among them was a man who looked like a sailor, who insisted upon taking the covering from Polly’s cage and holding her up to the light.

“Belong to you?” he said. “Don’t want to sell her, do you?”

Sonny Boy’s heart gave a great leap. He was himself so very tired of Polly’s voice, and he had so dreaded to take her back to Aunt Kate, that it did not seem to him possible that any one could want her.

“She’s a handsome bird,” continued the man, “and hasn’t she got a voice! She isn’t exactly the bird for a home pet, but at a show she’d draw. And I belong to a show.”

The man seated himself beside Sonny Boy and spoke in a low tone. “‘The Wonder of the World’—that’s the name of the show that I belong to,” he said.

That was the very circus that had been at Poppleton the summer before, the one that Tom had been so much interested in!

“Oh, then, perhaps you know all about the Wild Man of Borneo!” cried Sonny Boy eagerly. “Have you ever seen him near to?”

The sailor looked confused, and there was a queer twinkle in his eye.

“I am some acquainted with the Wild Man,” he said slowly.

“Did he really come from Borneo? And is he truly wild?” asked Sonny Boy with eager curiosity.

“He is just about as wild as they make them,” said the man, wagging his head solemnly. And Sonny Boy’s heart thrilled with fear and wonder.

“We tried to play Wild Man in our barn,” he said to the man. “But none of the fellows knew how to be wild. Tom wanted me to find out how.”

The sailor drew near to Sonny Boy and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It wouldn’t do to let everybody know it, but if you and I are going to make a bargain about that parrot I don’t care if I tell you that I’m the Wild Man of Borneo, and I’ll show you just how I do it! I’ll give you twenty dollars for the parrot, and I’ll throw in the Wild Man business! I’ll do more than that—I’ll get you a chance to ride on the buffalo, in the procession, when the show comes to Bolton, this summer!”

Bolton was the town where the hospital was—the town they had just left. It would be easy to get to Bolton to the show.

“‘I’LL GIVE YOU TWENTY DOLLARS FOR THE PARROT.’”

Twenty dollars might be a small price for the parrot, but the secret of being a Wild Man and the chance to ride on a buffalo were extras that a boy could not easily resist! The parrot changed hands, and so did two ten-dollar bills. And the man gave Sonny Boy his address so that he might find him when the show came to Bolton.

“Aren’t you stuck up? Scat!” screamed Polly after Sonny Boy, by way of good-bye, when they parted at the city station.

Sonny Boy was very penitent when he found, on reaching home, that his absence had made Aunt Kate very anxious. She said a dreadful thing; she said that she never could trust Sonny Boy again!

But Sonny Boy knew she would find out that he wasn’t the kind of a boy that runs away. He thought it was enough to make any boy lose his mind to change his white mice for that parrot!

Aunt Kate thought that twenty dollars was a plenty for the parrot! She said she would see about the extras. She didn’t seem to understand the advantages of learning to be a Wild Man or of riding on a buffalo.

But she said she thought of taking a house at Bolton for the summer, while her husband was away at the war; it was seashore, and it was also near the city, where she could hear the war-news soon.

And then Sonny Boy felt sure that he should not miss his extra pay