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'Devil! devil! devil! screamed this amiable bird, flopping up and down on the floor. 'You're a liar! You're a liar! Pickles. Having delivered himself of this bad language, Billy waddled to his master's chair, and climbing up by the aid of his claws and beak, soon established himself in his old position.
"Deil rax the birds' thrapples," he cried. At this all the noise was hushed and in a twinkling the moor was empty. Only one bird was left, standing on tall legs before him with its head bowed upon its breast, and its beak touching the heather. Then the man repented his words and stared at the thing in the moss. "What bird are ye?" he asked thrawnly.
It must be admitted, however, in due justice, that the class that played "As You Like It" that year had some grounds on which to base its pretensions and vain-glory. For had not a great stage manager been present and applauded until his palms were purple and perspiration beaded his beak of a nose?
Another day, under the bushes not far from his shanty, he found a small Hawk lying dead. He clutched it as a wonderful prize, spent an hour in looking at its toes, its beak, its wings, its every feather; then he set to work to make a drawing of it. A very bad drawing it proved, although it was the labour of days, and the bird was crawling with maggots before he had finished.
"Uncle Roy showed us a stuffed one in the wonder room, and told us all about its long beak with a point like a finger to feel for its food in the mud because its eyes are too far back to see well in front, and all about its sky dance; and Rap has seen one sitting on its nest in a spring snowstorm."
"Yes, yes! certainly," answered Michel Ardan, who was examining it as an artist. "I only regret that its form is not a little more slender, its cone more graceful; it ought to be terminated by a metal group, some Gothic ornament, a salamander escaping from it with outspread wings and open beak."
Well, in his writing he displays to us his vanity; whilst in his Painting we discern only his reverence. In his writing, too, he displays his harshness swoops hither and thither a butterfly equipped with sharp little beak and talons; whereas in his painting we are conscious only of his caressing sense of beauty. But look from the writer, as shown by himself, to the means by which himself is shown.
"And without these dear ones how could I enter?" saith she; and the souls trembled with her in her fear. But the robin tapped upon the golden gates three times with his beak, and flung his song into the shining blue of the skies. Then a voice came forth, saying: "By what right comest thou, of all birds, to disturb the peace of paradise with thy singing?"
Now and again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak extended, the body gorged with carrion.
Also, if you should care to partake of any of the food, remember not to touch it with your hands: that is the very worst of bad manners. Always take it with your beak I mean your mouth." Sara stood perfectly still, watching; never had she been so charmed and astonished. "Who are they?" she asked, after a moment.