Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk and five curious objects something like small black stars. With the chalk he drew upon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel walked on one of these chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned Niafer to him. Standing there, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Then he placed the five black stars in a row,—
* * * * *
—and went over to the next line.
The stork having been thus properly summoned, Manuel recalled to the bird the three wishes which had been promised when Manuel saved the stork's life: and Manuel said that for each wish he would take a son fetched to him by the stork in the manner of the Philistines.
The stork thought it could be arranged. "Not this morning, though, as you suggest, for, indebted as I am to you, Dom Manuel, I am also a very busy bird. No, I have any number of orders that were put in months before yours, and I must follow system in my business, for you have no notion what elaborate and exact accounts are frequently required by the married men that receive invoices from me."
"Come now," says Manuel, "do you be accommodating, remembering how I once saved your life from the eagle, and my wife and I will order all our babies now, and spare you the trouble of keeping any accounts whatever, so far as we are concerned."
"Oh, if you care to deal with such wholesale irregularity, and have no more consideration than to keep casting old debts in my bill, I might stretch a point in order to be rid of you," the stork said, sighing.
"Now, but surely," Manuel considered, "you might be a little more cheerful about this matter."
"And why should I, of all the birds that go about the heavens, be cheerful?"
"Well, somehow one expects a reasonable gaiety in you who bring hilarity and teething-rings into so many households—"