“Oh, they snatch from each other, during the winter,” he explained. “It is thief rob thief, when honest victims are not forthcoming. And—what is more to the point—they must keep their beaks in, against the return of the goldfinches with the spring.”
The Duchessa—for I scorn to deceive the trustful reader longer; and (as certain fines mouches, despite my efforts at concealment, may ere this have suspected) the mysterious lady was no one else—the Duchessa gaily laughed.
“Yes,” she said, “the goldfinches will return with the spring. But isn't that rather foolish of them? If I were a goldfinch, I think I should make my abode permanent in the sparrowless south.”
“There is no sparrowless south,” said Peter. “Sparrows, alas, abound in every latitude; and the farther south you go, the fiercer and bolder and more impudent they become. In Africa and the Hesperides, which you have mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning—it is the instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows to remain away.”
He delivered his last phrases with an accent, he punctuated them with a glance, in which there may have lurked an intention.
But the Duchessa did not appear to notice it.
“Yes—true—so we do,” she assented vaguely. “And what you tell me of the sparrows in the Hesperides is very novel and impressive—unless, indeed, it is a mere traveller's tale, with which you are seeking to practise upon my credulity. But since I find you in this communicative vein, will you not push complaisance a half-inch further, and tell me what that thing is, suspended there in the sky above the crest of the Cornobastone—that pale round thing, that looks like the spectre of a magnified half-crown?”
Peter turned to the quarter her gaze indicated.
“Oh, that,” he said, “is nothing. In frankness, it is only what the vulgar style the moon.”
“How odd,” said she. “I thought it was what the vulgar style the moon.”