“Just look at him, Jem.”
“Look at him, Mas’ Don? I am a-looking at him with all my eyes. He’s a beauty, he is. Why, if I was a bird like that with such a shabby, dingy looking, sooty suit o’ clothes, I know what I’d do.”
“What would you do?”
“Why, I’d moult at once. Look at the rum little beggar. Arn’t he comic? Why, he arn’t got no wings and no tail. Hi! Cocky, how did you get your beak bent that way? Look as if you’d had it caught in a gate. Have another?”
Jem took up a large raspberry-like fruit that he had picked some time before, and held it out to the bird, which stopped short, and held its head down comically, looking first at Jem, and then at the berry. With a rapid twist it turned its head on the other side, and performed the same operation with the left eye.
“Well, he is a rum un!” cried Jem, laughing. “Look! Mas’ Don, look!”
Don was watching the eccentric-looking little creature, which ran forward rapidly, and then paused.
“Why, ’tarn’t a wild bird at all!” cried Jem. “It’s one of the ‘my pakeha’ chap’s cocks an’ hens. Well, I ham blessed!”
For rapid almost as thought, and before Jem could recover from his surprise, the bird had darted forward, seized the fruit, and was off a dozen yards before he had darted out his hand after it.
“Too late, Jem.”