"She had queer ways, to be sure—my wife. As you all know, our way of hatching eggs is turn about, the Mother Birds sitting all day, while we Lords of the Nest sit at night. But my wife would take notions sometimes and not sit at all. In that case I always sat night and day until the job was finished. By-a-sore-breast-bone! but making a nest in the hard-graveled desert is a job to be avoided."
"Sore knuckles!" exclaimed Magh, "where are we at? We were talking of feathers."
"So we were, so we were," decided Mooswa. "And what I want to know is, do the Men eat the feathers they hunt for?"
"Oh, Jungle Dwellers!" exclaimed Magh; "if you were to sit in my cage for half a day you would see what they do with them. The Women come there with their heads covered with all kinds of feathers, red, and green, and blue—Silly! how would I look with my head stuck full of funny old feathers?"
"Like the Devil!" exclaimed Sa'-zada.
"Like a Woman," retorted Magh. "And their hair is so pretty, too. I've seen red hair just like mine, and then to cover it up with a crest of feathers like Cockatoo wears; I'd be ashamed of the thing."
"It's a sin to murder the Birds," whimpered Mooswa; "that's the worst part of it."
"Tonk, tonk, tonk!" came a noise just like a small Boy striking an iron telegraph post with a stick. It was the small Coppersmith Bird clearing his throat. Very funny the green pudgy little chap looked with his big black mustaches.
"The Men are great thieves," he asserted. "When I was a chick my Mother taught me to stick my tail under my wings for fear they would steal the feathers as I slept."
"Steal tail feathers!" screamed Eagle; "I should say they would. Out in the West, where was my home, when a Man becomes a great Chief he sticks three of my tail feathers in his hair; and when the Head Chief of a great Indian tribe rises up to make a big talk, what does he hold in his hand? The things that are bright like water-drops——"