The boy held her by a string tied around one of her legs.

She was a gray parrot with a few red feathers in her tail, and she had bright eyes, and a very knowing air.
The boy said he had been careful to buy a young one that could not speak, for he knew the Morris boys would not want one chattering foreign gibberish, nor yet one that would swear.

He had kept her in his bunk in the ship, and had spent all his leisure time in teaching her to talk.
Then he looked at her anxiously, and said, "Show off now, can't ye ?" I didn't know what he meant by all this, until afterward.

I had never heard of such a thing as birds talking.

I stood on the table staring hard at her, and she stared hard at me.