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She watched the birds bathe bullfinches, smooth-coated and well-found; slim willow-wrens; thrushes, ermine-breasted; lusty blackbirds with beaks of crude yellow. They made neat little tracks over the soft mud, drank, bathed, preened, and made other neat little tracks.
They watched the merry children tumble round the playground. Silvermane browsed where he listed under the shady trees, and many a sinewy red hand caressed his flowing mane. Black Bolly neighed her jealous displeasure from the corral, and the other mustangs trampled and kicked and whistled defiance across the bars. The peacocks preened their gorgeous plumage and uttered their clarion calls.
It knew itself supreme; it spread and preened itself without concealment. It set no spires to carry warnings, for no wind brought messages of alarm as it bulged outwards to the sun and stars. But, once its leafy portals left behind, the trees of the countryside were otherwise. The houses threatened them; they knew themselves in danger.
When full daylight came, Warrigal and her mates were closer in than ever; hidden in the scrub within forty paces of the man. Finn retained his old place, some five-and-thirty yards farther back, behind a bush. The crows preened their funereal plumage and waited, full of bright-eyed expectancy. Finn gnawed bitterly at his dry fragment of scrub root.
He saw a splash of flame over his head, and a scarlet tanager, alighting on a bush not a yard from him, prinked and preened itself, until it felt that its toilet was perfect, when it deliberately flew away again. It had not shown the slightest fear of the motionless youth, and Henry was pleased. He intended no harm to the creatures of the forest then, and he was glad they understood it.
She preened her poor little thoughts as if for pairing time, when soul fluttered to soul across the dinner-table. She knew that, intellectually speaking, she had been assigned to Rickman; for Mrs. Downey held that just as Mr. Rickman was the first to rouse Miss Roots to conversation, so Miss Roots alone had the power of drawing him out to the best advantage.
Their three little heads, growing darker every day, bobbed this way and that; they changed places in the nest; they thrust out small wings; above all and through all, they violently preened themselves.
The sea laughed and flashed and preened and allured, like a beautiful, coquettish woman. The herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life. The harbor was alive with white sails making for the channel. The ships began to sail outward and inward again. "On a spring day like this," said Anne, "I know exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection morning."
Young officers, with great dark eyes and slender figures tightly buttoned-up in grey-blue uniforms, visibly preened themselves as the car with the three veiled ladies would sweep round a corner; and really I think there must be something rather alluring about a passing glance from a pair of eyes in a face that will always remain a mystery. If I were a man I believe I should find it so.
But however persistently he preened him self before the widow, she vouchsafed him not one glance.
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