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Updated: May 2, 2025
For a clock stood above the main building; a chestnut crib-biter, looking out into the yard, had the top of his half door between his teeth and was wind-sucking with arched neck; while a flock of fan-tails strutted to and fro, flirting and foraging. A tortoise-shell cat crossed the yard leisurely. The cat was known as Maudie.
Billy Bluff, entering the yard in an expectant bustle, made for Maudie with a joyful flourish. Maudie arched her back, spat, and passed on gingerly. Whenever the pair met, and that was frequently, they went through the same pantomime, to the satisfaction of one of them at least. The bob-tail next made a dash at the fan-tails.
For Banjo, directly he felt his master on his back, began to galumph about the yard with a clatter of hoofs among the injured fan-tails and to the discomfiture of Maudie. "Right!" grunted Silver, settling into his saddle. "Now, you old hog, you!" Brown Lollypop cocked his long ears and watched with pained disapproval the gambols of his elder.
The fan-tails strutted vaingloriously; Maudie lay in the sun on the stable wall; and Billy Bluff's kennel was empty. "Hullo, where's Bill?" cried the young man. "Some idiot's let him off his chain," grumbled the girl. "Just like them. A hunting morning." A great gray horse, led by little Jerry, was feeling his way through the stable-door.
Maudie from the top of the ladder had watched their dying contortions with the cynical interest of a Roman matron criticizing the death-agonies of a gladiator in the arena. When after staggering about the fan-tails turned over on their backs and flopped, Maudie descended from her perch and toyed with them daintily during their last moments, finally carrying their corpses up into the loft.
Spencer that conscience, so far from being the voice of God, is but "the capitalised instinct of the tribe," an empirical fact established by heredity, just like fan-tails in pigeons; when Mr. Clifford popularises this teaching in St. George's Hall by announcing that conscience is the voice "of man bidding us to live for man," and Mr.
Even the fan-tails, splashing in mid-air, were not deceived. Albert came forward and ventured a shy and sullen word of congratulation. "That hundred thousand you won for me made it possible, no doubt," replied Silver gravely. Albert was still on his pinnacle. "Very glad to 'elp in such a good cause, sir," he answered.
The monotony of our sea-life was broken by one event of special interest, the addition of another human being to our large number. I must mention first, for it seems as if they brought her, that all one day we sailed in a cloud of beautiful gray-and-white gulls, flying incessantly over and around us, with their pretty orange bills and fringed wings and white fan-tails.
After that, Maudie felt queer herself, and not only from the results of a stricken conscience. Indeed, but for the urgent and instant ministrations of Putnam's Only Gentleman she would have followed where the good fan-tails had gone.
It was Sunday morning at Putnam's, and in Maudie's estimation things were more comme il faut than they had been for long past. About a fortnight since there had been trouble in the yard during the night, and after it, for some hours before he went away, the Monster-without-Manners had been subdued almost to gentlemanliness. Then two of the fan-tails had been taken ill.
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