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"You are sad again, my Morning-Star," said he. "Be comforted; your father will be found." But Isal did not tell him her dream this time. "What is she going to do?" asked the rather forward Tufter of Rosedrop, as she came forth through the window again. "She is perplexed," said Rosedrop. "We will come for her answer to-morrow night."
The kill was a half-starved brush-tailed wallaby, and nobody got much out of it but Warrigal and Finn, both of whom growled fiercely while they ate, in a manner which said plainly that they were not entertaining that night, at all events before the edge had been taken off their own appetites. So old Tufter got nothing more nutritious than a few scraps of scrubby fur.
Towards morning, when they were a good thirty miles distant from Mount Desolation, they topped a ridge, upon the farther slope of which a small mob of nine kangaroos were browsing among the scrub. Finn was after them like a shot, and Warrigal was at his heels, the rest of the pack streaming behind in a ragged line, the tail of which was formed by old Tufter and the whelps.
At this the Tufter who had spoken so rashly looked very foolish, and the rest cackled over it. "You're a goose!" said they, all except Rosedrop, who came up and stroked her brother's tuft with her bill. "Isal must be brought here," at last said the Phoenix. "You must all four go and bring her here with the coat."
The six whelps had disappeared, old Tufter and the oldest of the mothers of the pack were no more, and neither the carrion-crows nor the ants had profited one atom by these deaths. The pack had not wittingly hastened the end of these weaker ones, but it had left only their bones behind upon the trail.
It was very hard for the Phoenix to avoid speaking of this whenever the Old Brown Coat was mentioned, and he continued for some time to wander upon the subject, till they all thought he was through, and the Tufter, who had once been rash asked: "And who shall tell Isal?" The Phoenix was not really through, though.
While all this cackling was going on, the Phoenix maintained a stiff silence. At last he stroked his beak with a claw. "Hush!" said the second Tufter, "we shall hear something now." And surely the Phoenix did speak. "Children, Isal must know of this. We took her away on the Old Brown Coat. My great-great-great grandfather made the coat. He was called Phoenix the Tailor."
Even Tufter got a good meal from this kill, for the kangaroo was a big fellow of well over five feet from nose to haunch, without mention of his huge muscular tail, the meaty root of which kept the whelps busy for hours afterwards.
They waited still on the old bird and brought him all the information they could find about the affairs of the world. "I wonder how the Old Brown Coat does," said the Tufter who had once been rash, as they all stood round the Phoenix one night. "That was a very grand event we brought about the marriage of the Prince with Isal.
And he went on with his reminiscences till he was quite exhausted. After that the Tufter hardly dared mention the Mouse, and, indeed, began to suspect that he was not so very learned after all; but he proceeded to state how he had gathered that the Prince had sent messengers to find the woodman, Isal's father.
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