already extended over a week.

"Aw, Doctor dear," said Patsy, as Orlando's mother fluttered into the
garden like a gorgeous hen with wings outspread, her clothes a riot of
contradictory colours, all of them insistently bright, "d'ye know what
this place is--this terry firmy on which we stand, that's wan mile wan
way, an' half a mile the other? Ye don't? Well, I'll tell ye: it's a
zoolyogical gardin. Is it like a human bein' she is, the dear ould
wumman there? Isn't she just some gay ould bird from the forests of the
Equaytor, wherivir it is? Look at the beautiful little white curls
hanging down her cheek, tied with ribbon-pink ribbon too--an' the bonnet
on her head! Did ye iver see annything like it outside a zoolyogical
gardin? Isn't it like the topknot of some fine old parakeet from
Pernambukoko--and oh, Father Rainbow, the maginta dress of her! Now I
tell you, Doctor dear, I tell you the truth, what I know! She wears
hoops, she does, the same as y'r grandmother used to. An' the bit of
rose ribbon round her waist, hanging down behind--now I ask y'r anner, is
it like a wumman at all? See the face of her, with the little snappin'
eyes an' the yellow beak of a nose, an' the sunset in her cheeks that's
put on wid a painter's brush! Look at her trippin' about! Floatin'--
shure, that's what she's doin'! If you listened hard, you'd hear her
buzzin'. It's the truth I tell ye. D'ye follow me?"

The Young Doctor liked talking to Patsy Kernaghan better than to any
other person in Askatoon. He was always sure to be stimulated by a new
point of view, but he never failed to provoke Kernaghan by scepticism.

"One wild bird from 'Pernambukoko' does not make a zoological garden,
Patsy," he said with an air of dissent.