“Have you got Joey?” she cried sharply, as if I were a thief.
I opened the bag, and he flopped out, flapping as if he hated the touch of the snow, now. She gathered him up and put her lips to his beak. She was flushed and handsome, her eyes bright, her hair slack, thick, but more witch-like than ever. She did not speak.
She had been followed by a grey-haired woman with a round, rather sallow face and a slightly hostile bearing.
“Did you bring him with you, then?” she asked sharply. I answered that I had rescued him the previous evening.
From the background slowly approached a slender man with a grey moustache and large patches on his trousers.
“You've got 'im back 'gain, Ah see,” he said to his daughter-in-law. His wife explained how I had found Joey.
“Ah,” went on the grey man. “It wor our Alfred scarred him off, back your life. He must 'a' flyed ower t' valley. Tha ma' thank thy stars as 'e wor fun, Maggie. 'E'd a bin froze. They a bit nesh, you know,” he concluded to me.
“They are,” I answered. “This isn't their country.”
“No, it isna,” replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was fine and tender, his nose delicately arched. His grey hair being slightly ruffled, he had a debonnair look, as of a youth who is in love.
“We mun tell 'im it's come,” he said slowly, and turning he called: