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THE ENCHANTED PARROT


day invited four of her admirers to come to see her. She had been out selling flowers at a stall in the market, in the morning, and had come across them, one after another — a barber, a shopkeeper's son, an officer, and a musician. She had asked each of them separately, and they had all accepted her invitation. So next day when the gardener had gone into his garden, the shopkeeper's son arrived first to pay his addresses to the gardener's wife. He was shown into the bathroom, and had hardly begun his bathing operations, when the barber was seen running up to the house. So he was turned out of the bathroom, exactly as he was, and pushed into a little outhouse of wattle and daub where the gardener kept his pots. The barber then went into the bathroom, and was not half through his bath, when the musician appeared. So he in turn was shoved into the outhouse, and told to be careful, for there was a serpent somewhere about in it, with a brood of young ones. The barber thought to himself, " Well ! I must keep quiet for a bit ! " and just at that moment, up came the officer. The musician who was in the bathroom was hurriedly got out and hidden in the outhouse behind some pots. The gardener was then seen coming home, so the officer was concealed in the same place as the others. Then the festival began, and the gardener and his