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Updated: May 14, 2025
This, virtually, I know to be the case; and that, once quit of the primitive maternal responsibility, she gave no more thought to them than a thrush gives to its fledglings when she has educated them to their first flights, and to the useful knack of cracking a snail on a stone.
"Here he is over here, you see," observed Frank. "He figured out that with the sun heading into the west he ought to get on that side of the nest in order to make a fine picture. So he climbed up and settled himself, waiting until the mother bird came with a fish for the fledglings, which may have taken hours." "I see him!" cried Bluff. "There, he's waving to us now!
Who knows? He is yet warm!" she cried. And in the heart of the woman arose a great hope. Tiburcio shrugged his shoulders. "Now it's their turn to mourn!" he answered. "They are sobbing, like us. It's a pair that remained behind because of the little ones. I dashed the pigeon-house to earth, I have killed the fledglings. See!" And he showed his bloody hands. "They flew away; they're on the house.
There was not very much time to do so in, for long before it was really dawn the gipsies were up and astir, and by noon the little brother and sister were farther from "home" than they had ever been since the day when their poor young mother arrived at Arbitt Lodge with her two starved-looking fledglings, now nearly six years ago.
And by a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless, pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish and impotent charity.
The egg is always laid betimes, and is usually the first to hatch, the period of incubation being a day or two less than that of the eggs of the foster-parent. And woe be to the fledglings whom fate has associated with a young cow-bird! He is the "early bird that gets the worm." His is the clamoring red mouth which takes the provender of the entire family.
The objects of his supreme hatred still often merit his good opinion for their bravery and fighting qualities, but upon raw Eastern recruits and West-Point fledglings he looks with mild disdain.
It has feed and water-pans in it, straw upon the floor as a carpet, and behind flannel portières is supposed to burn a lamp with mother ardor sufficient to keep the small fledglings warm, though orphaned. Did the week-old babies Leghorn have to be content with such mechanical mothering? Not at all!
Panting girls looking in vain for the right partner, who is probably not ten yards from them, but wedged in between substantial dowagers, whom he is cursing in his heart, but from whom there is no escape; or perhaps philosophically and perfidiously making the best of his unavoidable situation, and flirting shamefully with the one he likes next best to the imprisoned maiden on the staircase; or, the tables turned, young fledglings pining madly for their respective enslavers, and picturing to themselves how she may be even now whirling round to that pealing waltz in the arms of some former adorer or delightfully new acquaintance, little heeding him who is languishing in his white neckcloth, actually within speaking distance, but separated as effectually as if he were in another country.
And he was happy at having two unit mates like Roger Manning and Astro to depend on when he was out in space, commanding one of the finest ships ever built, the powerful rocket cruiser Polaris. As Roger and Astro continued to talk to the fledglings, Tom sipped his tea and thought of his own first days at the Academy.
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