Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me fond of Kadott is that she is very much in love with me; but she annoys me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and cocking her ear, as if to say:
"There is going to be a love scene, and I must beware of eavesdroppers."
Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.
And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robin butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.
When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time.
SEVENTH PERIOD
My wife is a most observant woman.
"Love," she said to me, apparently apropos of nothing at all, "must be a farce in a country where there is no moonlight."