The roof jarred.
Oh, noble cock!
I turned in silence upon my entertainer. There he sat on an old battered chest, in his old battered gray coat, with patches at his knees and elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. I glanced round the room. Bare rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them. Earth floor, but a heap of potatoes in one corner, and a sack of Indian meal in another. A blanket was strung across the apartment at the further end, from which came a woman’s ailing voice and the voices of ailing children. But somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed no complaint.
“Mrs. Merrymusk and children?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the cock. There he stood majestically in the middle of the room. He looked like a Spanish grandee caught in a shower, and standing under some peasant’s shed. There was a strange supernatural look of contrast about him. He irradiated the shanty; he glorified its meanness. He glorified the battered chest, and tattered gray coat, and the bunged hat. He glorified the very voices which came in ailing tones from behind the screen.
“Oh, father,” cried a little sickly voice, “let Trumpet sound again.”
“Crow,” cried Merrymusk.
The cock threw himself into a posture. The roof jarred.
“Does not this disturb Mrs. Merrymusk and the sick children?”