It was not until the next day that I learned why he had been so mortally offended, and I hit upon the truth only by accident. I had unfortunately selected foolscap paper for the pattern. I had legal cap in the house and could have made him a lawyer’s bonnet just as well as not, if I had only thought of it.
Strangely enough, Hoot-Mon and I never had any well defined method of communication, though we lived together in intimate association for so long.
I tried him with the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, but he paid no attention to it. I wrote out the various things I wished to say to him and offered him the slips of paper, but he did not eat them or try to read them, and in memory of the insult I once offered him, I presume, he threw the slips into the fire as fast as I could write them. He had no ears that he could wig-wag signals with, and his own vocabulary was confined to two or three syllables, the phrasing and intonation of which varied scarcely at all.
He presented a strange bundle of contradictions, for he was slow witted at times, yet did not understand English, and too quick to jump at conclusions at others, yet the United States language passed him by unharmed. He ate Frogs but did not understand French, sausage and beer, without knowing German, and though he roosted by preference in the attic, he did not know Greek. He was very fond of oatmeal, but he had not the faintest comprehension of Scotch, though I caught him once, with my spectacles on, poring over a book of Scotch dialect which I had in my library. He burned the book afterward, which I did not in the least regret—I had meditated doing it for some time.
I tried him with phrases from every known tongue, but they all seemed alike to him. He did not have a speaking acquaintance with a single modern language, so far as I was able to discover. Very possibly he understood them all, but did not wish to let people know the extent of his knowledge. Perhaps it is his monumental silence which has given him his well deserved reputation for wisdom. At any rate, it contains a hint worth passing on, for there is a great deal of trouble in this world which is not caused by people keeping their mouths shut.
So Hoot-Mon and I lived through the most terrible Winter ever known in that latitude. The unaccustomed warmth of the cabin made him moult while the snow was yet deep upon the ground. He ate the feathers, afterward disgorging them in the usual ball when he had enough to make it worth the trouble. I have all of these little balls now, put away with my most treasured possessions.
He was a pitiful sight when all of his feathers were gone, and he caught cold. His cough distressed me greatly and his spirits drooped perceptibly. He had chills at regular intervals and his poor body was all covered with goose flesh. He wore his shawl, pinned closely at the throat with a safety-pin, until the feathers began to sprout again. While his head was moulting, he also wore his face mask.
Presently, however, Nature resumed business at the old stand and his body was covered with grey down. He looked like an Angora Cat at this stage. I examined the growth minutely with a magnifying-glass and was surprised to find that each feather grew up from a single stalk, like a plant, and sent out numerous branches which were closely interwoven with the branches from the stalk next to it. This is why an Owl’s wings make no sound; the wind passes under these branched feathers and the noise is smothered. You cannot hear the wind blow if you have a pillow over your head.
At last the backbone of Winter broke with a loud crash and the Chinook wind blew in from the south, laden with warm rain. The songs of Robins and Bluebirds were in the breath of it, though the snow was yet deep upon the ground, and my dooryard was filled with hungry Birds.
“Who would not give a Winter seed for a Summer song?”