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"Well," said he, stopping abruptly as he saw me, "well, considering the peacock Harley brought so bright a plume to his own nest, we must admire the generosity which spared this gay dunghill feather to mine!" "How?" said I, though I knew the cause of his angry metaphor. St. John used metaphors in speech scarcely less than in writing.
Des Barres, sitting his horse on the hill, blew upon his ungauntleted hand, then flacked it against his side to drive the blood back. Richard had a red surcoat and a blown red plume in his cap. He carried no shield, and by the ease with which he turned his body to look behind him, one hand on the crupper, Des Barres was sure that he was not in mail.
This rookery was started by me in 1896, because I saw at that time that the herons of Louisiana were being rapidly exterminated by plume hunters. My thought was that the way to preserve them would be to start an artificial rookery of them where they could be thoroughly protected.
Mrs Gamp went home to the bird-fancier's, and was knocked up again that very night for a birth of twins; Mr Mould dined gayly in the bosom of his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club; the hearse, after standing for a long time at the door of a roistering public-house, repaired to its stables with the feathers inside and twelve red-nosed undertakers on the roof, each holding on by a dingy peg, to which, in times of state, a waving plume was fitted; the various trappings of sorrow were carefully laid by in presses for the next hirer; the fiery steeds were quenched and quiet in their stalls; the doctor got merry with wine at a wedding-dinner, and forgot the middle of the story which had no end to it; the pageant of a few short hours ago was written nowhere half so legibly as in the undertaker's books.
Ray, glancing over his shoulder to inquire the cause of the sudden cessation of talk, caught sight of the snowy plume dancing on up the walk, of Blake standing in petrified and indignant silence, and then of Mrs. Stannard's face, her eyes filling with tears. He recalled instantly her recent questions and half-uttered warnings, and something told him the blow had come.
He retained his attitude of alert grace, sitting erect on his little haunches, an acorn in his paws, his bushy tail arching over his back like a plume. Then slowly the man opened his eyes with a dazed expression, at first a blur of consciousness. Then gradually the recognition of himself, of his surroundings, of his life, came into them, and that self-knowledge was unmistakable.
Suddenly beside one of the steamer's great red stacks there leaped a plume of white steam, and the prolonged deep blast of her whistle drowned all other sounds. "There she goes!" said Lydia pausing. She turned to watch the Nippon Maru move against the pier like a moving wall, swing free, push slowly out into the bay. Susan did not look.
The nightingale sang praise, and the woods sounded with the glory of its strains; the fowl was valued for its flesh, the ostrich for its plume, but what could the little humming-bird do, save rejoice in the glory of the flood of sunbeams, and disport itself over the flowers, and glance in the sunny light, as its bright breastplate flashed from rich purple to dazzling flame-colour, and its wings supported it, fluttering so fast that the eye could hardly trace them, as it darted its slender beak into the deep-belled blossoms.
The demon of the quick death shrank from the spot, and the Great Spirit smiled once more on the tribe that could produce such heroism. Lenawee's body was placed beside her lover's, and next morning, where her blood had spilt, the ground was pure, and on it grew in slender spires a new flower, the Indian plume: the transformed blood of sacrifice. The people loved that flower in all years after.
But the looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright difference which is between the cock of lordly plume and the moulting. Happily they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain them, a leg.
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