Scarlet fuchsias on a swaying branch freckled the ’dobe wall behind Loretta’s perch. The parrot, her claws wide apart, her brilliant rudder tilting to balance her gray body, industriously snapped at the blossoms. One secured at last, she turned slowly about and, with infinite care, let it drop upon the open pages of Padre Alonzo’s book.

The padre brushed the flower away and glanced up.

“Buenos dÍas, seÑor!” clacked Loretta; “buenos dÍas! buenos dÍas! buenos dÍas!”

“Good-day to thyself,” retorted the padre. He spoke in Spanish, shaking a stout finger. “And tear not the flowers again. They be the last of the kind till after the New Year. So take warning, I say, lest thou find thyself thrust without the garden.”

Loretta recognized displeasure in his voice. She mumbled an inquiring “Ga-a-wk! ga-a-wk!” and shifted thoughtfully from foot to foot. But, presently, the padre having resumed his reading, she turned once more to catch at the swaying branch.

When a second fuchsia came fluttering down to his hand, Padre Alonzo uncrossed his sandals and rose. “Oh! oh! oh!” he cried, wagging his close-cropped head so vigorously that the very beads of his rosary tinkled together. “Thou art the naughtiest bird in all of California! What if Padre Anzar finds thee despoiling his plant? He will put thee again where thou must fight to keep thy feathers—in the kitchen with the cats!”

At the mention of cats a startling change came over the parrot. Her plumage ruffled, her eyes began to roll, she straightened on the perch, uttering hoarse cries of fear and defiance.

“Then be good,” he counselled, “be good. Or off thou’lt likely go. Me-e-ow! me-e-ow!”

And now Loretta moved nearer, anxious for friendly terms. “Dame la mano,” she suggested; “a-a-aw, dame la mano! A-a-aw! a-a-aw!” She balanced tremblingly on one leg, curling the other under her.

Padre Alonzo put the stout finger into the proffered claw. “So, so,” he said. “And I shall not tattle. But tell me: What would make thee forget to use thy sharp pruning shears? An apple? or seeds? or one of Gabrielda’s sweet bis—”

Loretta perked her head to one side. “To-o-ny, To-o-ny, To-o-ny,” she droned coaxingly.

The padre thrust his thumbs under the white cord of his girdle and broke into a guffaw. “Thou jade!” he teased. “Wilt have Tony, eh? Well, I go to find him.” He gathered in his brown cassock, preparatory to stepping over the cacti here bordering the garden path. “But look you, if he comes, scrape not the gilt from the wires of his pretty cage.”

Another threatening shake of the finger, and the padre crossed the low, spiked hedge and waddled away through the sun.

When he came into sight a moment later round the dun wall of the mission, he carried a canary at his shoulder. “E-oo, e-oo,” he cooed, pattering forward. “Loretta wishes thy company. Sst! sst! She is bad after thee, Tony! But be wary, little one, be wary.”

The advice was wholly ignored. For, spying the parrot, Tony was instantly transformed from a silent, dumpy ball of yellow to a slim, dapper songster with a swelling throat.

Loretta greeted him with uproarious laughter, and a jargon of Spanish, patois, but triumphant. She paced the horizontal piece that gave her perch the form of a cross. She pu-r-red and gu-r-red. She swung by her curved beak and one leathery foot, shrilling her “Buenos dÍas, seÑor!” Then, as the padre hung the cage to a nail in the trellis built against the wall, she changed her performance to the clamorous repeating of a mass.

Padre Alonzo was shocked. “Sst! sst!” he chided; “thou wicked big-ears!”

The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before going he pulled at Loretta’s gaudy tail, not unkindly, and chuckled as she edged toward Tony with many a naÏve and fetching cock of her gray head.