“As a matter of fact,” said the superintendent, “I don’t believe he ever saw the bird; but if he has it we shall find it out and you’ll get it again.”

They let him go then; and he went to the chapel and looked at a dove above the young John’s head.  Then he went up to the kitchen and filled his pockets with lettuce leaves.  He knew nothing at all of parrots or how to care for them.

Things, you see, were moving right for the Avenue Girl.  The stain was coming off—­she had been fond of the parrot and now it was close at hand; and Father Feeny’s lusty crowd stood ready to come into a hospital ward and shed skin that they generally sacrificed on the football field.  But the Avenue Girl had two years to account for—­and there was the matter of an alibi.

“I might tell the folks at home anything and they’d believe it because they’d want to believe it,” said the Avenue Girl.  “But there’s the neighbours.  I was pretty wild at home.  And—­there’s a fellow who wanted to marry me—­he knew how sick I was of the old place and how I wanted my fling.  His name was Jerry.  We’d have to show Jerry.”

The Probationer worried a great deal about this matter of the alibi.  It had to be a clean slate for the folks back home, and especially for Jerry.  She took her anxieties out walking several times on her off-duty, but nothing seemed to come of it.  She walked on the Avenue mostly, because it was near and she could throw a long coat over her blue dress.  And so she happened to think of the woman the girl had lived with.

“She got her into all this,” thought the Probationer.  “She’s just got to see her out.”

It took three days’ off-duty to get her courage up to ringing the doorbell of the house with the bowed shutters, and after she had rung it she wanted very much to run and hide; but she thought of the girl and everything going for nothing for the want of an alibi, and she stuck.  The negress opened the door and stared at her.

“She’s dead, is she?” she asked.

“No.  May I come in?  I want to see your mistress.”

The negress did not admit her, however.  She let her stand in the vestibule and went back to the foot of a staircase.

“One of these heah nurses from the hospital!” she said.  “She wants to come in and speak to you.”

“Let her in, you fool!” replied a voice from above stairs.

The rest was rather confused.  Afterward the Probationer remembered putting the case to the stout woman who had claimed the parrot and finding it difficult to make her understand.

“Don’t you see?” she finished desperately.  “I want her to go home—­to her own folks.  She wants it too.  But what are we going to say about these last two years?”

The stout woman sat turning over her rings.  She was most uncomfortable.  After all, what had she done?  Had she not warned them again and again about having lighted cigarettes lying round.