“So do I, uncle,” I replied. “I wish we could find and shoot dozens of them, but I don’t long for the task of skinning them; they are so delicate and likely to tear.”
“Like all the birds related to the cuckoos,” said my uncle; “but we were very successful over this. By the way, Pete is getting very handy in that way. We must trust him with some of the commoner things, for it seems as if after all we shall have to fill up with the best of the less-known birds.”
“Oh, no,” I said, as I carefully smoothed down the loose silky plumage of our solitary specimen. “We’re tired now. When we have had a good wash and our tea-dinner we shall feel different.”
I carefully put away the trogon, and crossed to where Pete was busy getting the kettle to boil, and making other preparations for our evening meal. No light task, for his fire troubled him a good deal, and he began about it at once.
“What I want, Master Nat,” he said, “is some regular good stiff clay to make up into bricks. They’d bake hard. As for these stones I build up a fireplace and oven with, some go bang and fly off in splinters, and the other sort moulders all away into dust—regular lime, you know, that fizzles and cisses when it’s cold and you pour water over it, and then comes hot again.”
“Try some of those pieces out of the river bed.”
“I have, sir, and they’re worst of all. I say, Master Nat, stop and see that the pot don’t boil over. I want to go down and get some fresh, clean water.”
“Don’t be long, then,” I cried. “I say, what’s in the pot?”
“Dicky bird stoo!” said Pete, grinning. “No touching while I’m gone.”
He caught up the bucket and started off down the cliff-side towards the river, while I idly watched him till he was out of sight, and sat back away from the glow of the fire, for I was hot enough without that.