40 ERNEST HEMINGWAY
"What's it mean?" asked the drummer.
"It's a character out of Shakespeare," Mandy explained.
"Oh, give the bird a chance."
"What would you call him?" Scripps turned to the drummer.
"He ain't a parrot, is he?" asked the drummer. "If he was a parrot you could call him Polly."
"There's a character in 'The Beggar's Opera' called Polly," Mandy explained.
Scripps wondered. Perhaps the bird was a parrot. A parrot strayed from some comfortable home with some old maid. The untilled soil of some New England spinster.
"Better wait till you see how he turns out," the drummer advised. "You got plenty of time to name him."
This drummer had sound ideas. He, Scripps, did not ever know what sex the bird was. Whether he was was a boy bird or a girl bird.
"Wait till you see if he lays eggs," the drummer suggested. Scripps looked into the drummer's eyes. The fellow had voiced his own unspoken thought.
"You know a thing or two, drummer," he said.
"Well," the drummer admitted modestly, "I ain't drummed all these years for nothing."
"You're right there, pal," Scripps said.
"That's a nice bird you got there, brother," the drummer said. "You want to hang onto that bird."
Scripps knew it. Ah, these drummers know a thing or two. Going up and down over the face of this great America of ours. These drummers kept their eyes open. They were no fools.
