II
We passed through into a private workroom immediately behind the shop. His wife sat there sewing; a broad, motherly woman of forty-five, fat, tranquil, kind, with an old eye, a young voice, and a face that had got its general flabbiness through much paddling and gnawing from other women's teething babes. She sat still, unintroduced, but welcomed me with a smile.
I was saying to her husband that a hummingbird was a very small thing to ask him to stuff. But he stopped me with his lifted palm.
"My fran', a hummingbird has de pas-sione'—de ecstacie! One drop of blood wid the pas-sione in it"—He waved his hand with a jerk of the thumb in disdain of spoken words, and it was I who added,
"Is bigger than the sun?"
"Hah!" was all he uttered in approval, turning as if to go to work. I feared I had disappointed him.
"God measures by the soul, not by the size," I suggested. But he would say no more, and his wife put in as softly as a kettle beginning to sing,
"Ah, ha, ha! I t'ink dass where de good God show varrie good sanse."
I began looking here and there in heartiest admiration of the products of his art and presently we were again in full sympathy and talking eagerly. As I was going he touched my arm:
"You will say de soul is parted from dat lill' bird. And—yass; but"—he let a gesture speak the rest.