In April woods to stray!
And that finished with another burst of laughter, he set very adroitly to the mimicry of beasts and birds upon his frets. Never have I seen a face so consummately the action's. His every fibre answered to the call; his eyebrows twitched like an orator's; his very nose was plastic.
"Hst!" he cried softly; "hither struts chanticleer!" "Cock-a-diddle-doo!" crowed the wire. "Now, prithee, Dame Partlett!" and down bustled a hen from an egg like cinnamon. A cat with kittens mewed along the string, anxious and tender.
"A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of Macbeth."
"Macbeth!" I repeated—"Macbeth!"
"Ay," he said, "it was his seat while yet a simple soldier—flocks and flocks of them, wheeling hither, thither, in the evening air, crying and calling."
I listened in a kind of confusion. "... And Duncan," I said....
He eyed me with immense pleasure, and nodded with brilliant eyes on mine.
"What looking man was he?" I said at last as carelessly as I dared. "... The King, you mean,—of Scotland."
He magnanimously ignored my confusion, and paused to build his sentence.