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Love-birds, nestling shoulder to shoulder, with their heads tucked under their wings and all their feathers puffed out, so that they looked like globes of malachite; English bullfinches, with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly; troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet, richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, white as snow, with his dilatable tolling-tube hanging from his head, placid and silent; these, with a humbler crowd of linnets, canaries, robins, mocking-birds, and phoebes, slumbered calmly in their little cages, that were hung so thickly on the wall as not to leave an inch of it visible.
'I sent for you to request your aid. You can help me, Graham, and very materially. 'I'm willing to do so. What shall I do? Dr Graham looked puzzled, for he could by no means conceive the meaning of so odd a request. In common with other people, he was accustomed to consider Bishop and Mrs Pendle a model couple, who would be as miserable as two separated love-birds if parted.
With an effort he tried to pick up the thread of our conversation: "What did you say? Oh, the Stanleighs ... yes, yes, of course." He slowly nodded his head and fell silent. "I was about to say ..." He broke off again and seemed to ruminate profoundly.... "Love-birds " I caught the word feebly from his lips, spoken as if in a daze. The glass hung dripping in his relaxed grasp.
The immensely long tails of the macaws and the more slender tails of the Indian parroquets, the fine crest of the cockatoos, the swift flight of many of the smaller species, and the graceful motions of the little love-birds and allied forms, together with their affectionate natures, aptitude for domestication, and power of mimicry, combine to render them at once the most conspicuous and the most attractive of all the specially tropical forms of bird life.
Not a slave was to be seen, nor did there exist any smell, so universal a concomitant to indicate their presence. Some forty Brazilians, each with a cigar in his mouth, were loitering round the clean decks, while the crew were busy at the pumps, creating the greatest possible noise, in the accomplishment of which they were assisted by a flock of parrots and love-birds, perched in every direction.
The harem was a cage of excited love-birds to whom were duly brought detailed accounts of the nightly and daily doings.
The two boys were splendid marksmen with short sticks, which they threw into the flights of love-birds and sparrows as they passed. Whenever they killed one they squatted down and heated it on the ashes, and ate it straight away; and so small bird after small bird went down their throats all day long, and they never thought to keep them until they had sufficient for a good square meal.
Not a garment straggled about the room. The toilet table, usually strewn with a myriad promiscuously ill-assorted articles, stared nakedly. There were no boxes. The cage of love-birds, Elodie's inseparable companions, had gone. "Madame ?" He questioned the femme de chambre. "But Madame has departed. Did not Monsieur know?" Monsieur obviously did not know.
"You seem very much distressed," he observed, with ironic concern. "One might think you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds." Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck. "I don't know what you are talking about," I bluntly tried to fend off his implication. I felt as if I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to probe me mercilessly with some sharp instrument.
"Or the love-birds from India!" said Julia. "Or my ivory fan from China, young sailor boy!" said Isabella. "Don't forget the journal you are to keep, or the subjects I asked you to note for me!" exclaimed the studious James.
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