“Well,” he asked, “how do you find yourself? Variety is charming, eh? But you’re a poor thing in tigers.”
I put my paw on him.
“Now,” I said, “restore me instantly, or I’ll crush you.”
“No,” answered Robinson, “you won’t; you’ll crush a grey rat—that’s all. You can’t touch me, any more than they’d hurt you if they shot this tiger. You may like to hear the news. We’ve taken your carcase back to your diggings. Several doctors have examined you, and they are divided in their opinions. Some say you are dead; others fancy it is a case of trance. Primrose went down and wept over you, and kissed your pallid cheek. She says it doesn’t matter now who knows her secret passion, as you have gone. A devoted woman, Tarver!”
Nothing annoyed me more on that terrible day than the mental spectacle of Primrose Robinson dropping tears on me and fussing about my bachelor rooms.
“I suppose you’ll marry her all right now?” asked Robinson.
“I won’t,” I answered. “I defy you and your devilish accomplishments. Providence isn’t going to let this outrage go on for ever. Something will be sure to happen, and the moment I’m restored I’ll summon you, if it costs me every farthing I’ve got in the world.”
“The only thing that can happen,” said Robinson, “is this: I shall hurry you on. There are worse tenements than tigers. You’ll have to give in; it’s only a question of time. You’ll go to sleep presently and when you wake you’ll find yourself the adjutant stork. He happens to be moulting just now, too—a sight for the gods, my boy! I’ll look you up again in the course of a day or two. Till then, ta-ta, Tarver.”
He was gone with a whisk of his tail, and despite the bold front I had put on before him, I broke down, shed bitter tears, and I suppose finally went to sleep on my sawdust.
Next morning I woke to find Robinson’s prediction verified. I gazed gloomily at my hideous future through the eyes of an adjutant stork—a bird in poor feather—a piteous, comic object that made even the professional attendants laugh as they passed me. The public poured forth their wit upon me; the human misery in my eye merely served to accentuate the proportions of my beak, the length of my legs, the general air of ruin and decay which characterised me. I tried to talk again, believing all birds possessed the power; but I found that an adjutant stork does not. Doubtless Robinson knew this. He did not manifest himself that day, but on the following evening, after office hours, he arrived in the form of a house-sparrow and sat upon the edge of a bath where I was standing on one leg—that being, so I found, the most comfortable position.