All that evening Jay Park searched for his pet. He searched his own garden and looked into the gardens of his neighbors and walked all around the nearby park, crying, "Everest! Everest! Everest!" People he met looked at him askance. Those who knew him by sight thought he had become deranged by the sudden deaths of his mother and father. Those who didn't thought he was drunk. "Everest! Everest! Where on earth are you?" he called, and an earnest-looking schoolboy took the question seriously and replied, "In the Himalayas. On the border between Nepal and Tibet." But of the mynah there was neither sight nor sound.

Darkness fell and Jay Park went to bed and slept badly. His pet was lost. He still had the cage of course, he could go to the pert shop and buy some other bird, but that would be cold comfort. Nothing could replace Everest, his first and only friend. Nonetheless he got up very early in the morning and walked to the pet shop, hoping against hope that the mynah would be sitting outside its closed door, like a homing pigeon waiting to be let into its loft. But of course it wasn't.

Jay Park trudged despondently home again. After breakfast, he thought, I'll ring the police and I'll put advertisements everywhere and I'll offer a reward. But even if anyone saw him, how could they catch him? And supposing someone did and I got Everest back, the bird would have to be caged forever. Which is exactly what he hated and why he was so grumpy. At least now he's free, Jay Park said to himself, free as a bird. So one of us is happy.

He put aside the thought of breakfast and went upstairs, nerving himself to face the empty room, the empty cage. He opened the door. "Morning, Park," said a muffled voice, and there, in his cage, on his perch, was the mynah with a mouthful of mealworms. Jay Park's first impulse was to rush forward and close the window. If I can manage to do that, he thought, then even if I'm not quick enough to shut the door of the cage, at least he won't be able to get out of the room. But before he could move, Everest swallowed the mealworms, hopped out of the cage, and perched on the back of a chair.

"Shut the window, Park," he said. "There's an awful draft." Stunned, Jay Park obeyed.

"You're back!" he said hoarsely.

"Looks like it," said Everest.

"But . . . but why?"

"Hungry. And cold. Too many cats bout anyway. You haven't got one, I hope?"

"No, no, you're the first pet I've ever had."

"Pet, eh? That's a bit patronizing."

"Oh, sorry. The first friend, I meant to say, Everest," said Jay Park.

"That's better," said the mynah.

He began to preen himself, stretching his wings and settling his feathers. "Park," said Everest, "you've never had a girlfriend either?" Peggy Flower, thought Jay Park! The only girlfriend I ever had. At least that's how I thought of her, though I never told her how I felt. She was small and rather plump with fair hair; I can see her now. Though we were the same age, we were in different classes, but I would watch her in the playground, skipping about with some of the other girls, and she smiled at me, once.

"Penny for your thoughts, Park," said Everest, his head cocked to one side. A silly idea came into Jay Park's mind, which was that when the mynah looked at him like that, the bird could actually read his thoughts, never mind offering a penny for them. "I did have a girlfriend, Everest," he said. "Turned you down, did she?" said the mynah.

"No."

"Why didn't you marry her, then?"

"We were only ten," said Jay Park. "She moved away. I've never seen her since."

"About this cage, Park," Everest said.

"Yes?"

"OK for sleeping in. OK for eating in. But in the future, let's leave this door open, OK?"

"You mean, you want to be free to fly about the house?" said Jay Park.

"Sure," said Everest. "No problem there, is there?"

A many great problems, thought Jay Park, He pictured the equestrian statue in the middle of the park, liberally bespattered with pigeon droppings, and imagined the state in which his house would very shortly be. But how should he put it to Everest?

---

THIS CHAPTER IS NOT DONE YET. Thank you for your patience :)