"Kaw-aw-aw! Talking of nests," said Kauwa, "when I was in Calcutta I designed a nest that would last forever—yes, forever. Each year before that time, because of the monsoon winds, my nest had always been destroyed; but the time I speak of, having a job on hand——"
"On beak, you mean!" laughed Sa'-zada.
"Aw-haw!—to clean up about a cook-house behind a certain place of the Sahib's in which they bottled water of a fierce strength—as I say, being busy in this same compound, I spied many, many twigs of wire."
"What's wire?" asked Mooswa; "I've never, that I know of, eaten such twigs."
Sa'-zada explained, "Kauwa means bottled soda water, I fancy, and the wire from the corks."
"A thought came to me," continued Kauwa, "to build my nest of these bright little things, and I did, first getting my mate's opinion on the matter, of course. Dead Pigs! but it was a nest! We would swing, and jump, and hang to it by our beaks, and never a break in the wall. But I had forgotten all about the selfish desire of the Men—but that was after. The first trouble was when Cuckoo—a proper budmash bird she is—came and laid two eggs in the nest. I saw the difference in the eggs at once, but my mate declared that they were all her own laying. She took rather a pride in her ability to lay eggs—to tell you the truth, we quarreled over it."
"I believe that," yawned Adjutant.
"However, she had her way, and started to hatch out these foreign devils; but the Men, as I have said, seeing my beautiful nest, sent a Man of low caste up the tree, and he took it away, Cuckoo eggs and all. It was a good joke on the Cuckoo Bird, and I was so mad at the way everything turned out, Caw-ha! I never made it again."
"I can swallow a plantain at one gulp," said Hornbill proudly.