“Every bit,” replied Father Stork; and Mother Stork repeated the words after him in a lower tone. “They are to us more than all the wealth of Marrakesh, and when, in the fulness of time, the shells open and the three little babies are given to us they will be dearer still. You must wait patiently until their day arrives, and then you will be able to see for yourself.”
“O, little master,” said the slave-girl, “it is time to descend. The sun is hot, and thy lady mother will await thee.”
So Tsamani went down to the hareem of his father’s house, where his mother passed most of her day lying on soft cushions and eating sweets and contradicting his father’s other wives and favourites because she was above them all. And when he went upon the roof with her in the afternoon the voices of the storks were no more to him than they were to her—no more than the click-clack of their long heavy bills. But on the following morning the sound had a meaning for him—to his great delight.
Sometimes Father Stork would relieve Mother Stork in the performance of her duties, for, as he said: “Our love is equal, why then should the service not be divided?” And in the course of a few days there were three little storks in the nest, with down for feathers, and such awkward bodies and ugly heads on them that you and I, not knowing better, would have laughed. Tsamani was rather disappointed when he saw them for the first time, but Father Stork reassured him.
“Look at me,” he said, putting his second leg firmly on the ground, and lifting the heavy bill off his breast. “I am a big, fine bird—nearer four feet long than three. See how beautifully my bright red bill contrasts with the black of my great wing-coverts and the chief quill feathers, and the pure white of the rest of my body. Look at my bright red legs and toes; think what an effective finish they give to me. Two of my children will grow to be like me, as they are males; the third will be like her mother—not quite as large and not so brightly coloured as the others. And all the big feathers will be brown before they are black.”
Each bird in turn would fly from the roof to the pools in the gardens of the Moorish grandees, and would come back with food for the little ones. If the father went, the mother stayed; if the father stayed, the mother went; the nestlings were never left alone by night or day. It was hard work, for the three babies were anxious to grow and to have feathers in place of down, and to be able to fly or flutter to the ponds and feed themselves. “Sometimes,” said Father Stork, “they try too soon, and tumble down into the street and are killed; at other times they must stop half-way because of exhaustion—but then every Moslem picks them up and returns them to their nest, for it would be a terrible misfortune to harm one of us. If some were hurt we should all leave the country.”
“Far away to the north-west,” continued Father Stork, “there is a country called Great Britain, and we used to go there every year; but when men saw us they would say that we were very rare, and would shoot us, without pausing to think that that would make us rarer still. So for fifty years we have not been to those islands, and I do not think we shall ever go there again, though one or two stray birds may alight there, blown out of their course by a gale. Though we are kind to all who treat us well, we can fight when it is necessary to do so. We aim at the head and eyes of those who ill-use us; but against men who carry guns no fighting avails, so we leave them—and now on all the myriad roofs of Great Britain no stork builds its nest.”
“Are the Mohammedans the only people who are good to you, O Father of the Red Legs?” asked Tsamani.
“They are our best friends,” said the Stork; “though in parts of Europe we are welcomed, particularly in Holland, where the people respect us for the love we bear our little ones. They tell the story of a great fire in one of their cities called Delft, where some storks, unable to remove their nestlings, died with them. We thought nothing of it—any storks would have done the same; but the good people of Delft were very impressed and told all the Dutch folk far and wide, and increased our welcome from that day. They even put up cart-wheels on poles for us to build our nests on in districts where the house-roofs have no flat surface that will help us. As a rule, when we go to a town where the inhabitants are of mixed race and religion, we find out where the Mohammedan quarter is, and build there. Uneducated people think it is because we prefer one faith to another; but the truth, of course, is that the Mohammedans respect us, welcome our arrival, regret our departure and never disturb our nests. They even say that we bring good luck to the dwellers in the house we choose for our building.”
“To-day,” said Father Stork, a week or two after the last conversation, “we are taking our young to the marshes. Ask your mother to let you walk in the Sultan’s garden near the great pomegranate orchards by the Spanish gate.”