"Those are fine names, all of them," he declared, picking himself up with great solicitude for the pipe, "but why did the canary get two?"
"Because Aunt Edith likes Jean the best, but Uncle Joe says there's more to Edouard," she explained, "so they named him both, because Uncle Joe said anything was better than a divided family."
"That's right," said the young man, "anything is."
His face, which had looked for a moment merry and boyish, darkened again, and his big eyes glowered intently at the shadowy hemlocks.
"Anything," he added, in a low voice, "but a sacrifice of principle, a sacrifice of truth, as it actually is, to the petty conventions of a rotten society!"
With that he sat his teeth hard and pulling a leather pouch out of his pocket, began stuffing the pipe decisively. Caroline waited for him to continue, but as he lit the pipe and puffed at it in silence, she concluded that the interview was at an end, and started up the path.
"You'd better not—" he began, but stopped suddenly and appeared to reconsider. "Oh, I don't know," he added, "it might be better, after all. Go along."
The trail was little more than a worn line in the grass, now; soon it turned sharply to the left, skirted the wood, and led to a tiny, dilapidated cottage. Caroline had more than once passed it by under the impression that it was abandoned, or used perhaps for storing ice or wood; but to-day a thin curl of smoke stained the blue above it and through the open door of the one living-room that formed its ground-floor she saw a scarlet Navajo blanket, on which reposed a magnificent snowy Angora cat. A great green bough covered one of the walls, and a few chairs, a square pine table and a guitar flung against a pile of bright cushions, completed the furniture. At the further end of the room, stretched upon the mate to the Angora's blanket, lay a young woman, sobbing violently.
Caroline hesitated, but Henry D. Thoreau recognized grief, and knew perfectly well what to do. Stepping quietly over to the prostrate figure he encircled it once, looking for a point of vantage, then selecting two little white, pink-tipped fingers, he licked them caressingly.
The sobbing ceased: the girl drew a longer shaking breath.