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Updated: May 18, 2025
"Had you lingered there," he said, "word about us would have gone back to Angora at top camel speed. What possessed you to come away?" "God!" said I, and he nodded, so that I began to preen myself. He noticed my gathering self-esteem.
I must break myself of the habit of wandering off on a meditative tangent to the circle of conversation. I was brought back by hearing Pasquale say: "So you're going to marry an Englishman. It's all fixed and settled, eh?" "Of course," laughed Carlotta. "Have you made up your mind what he is to be like?" I could see the unconscionable Don Juan instinctively preen himself peacock fashion.
He paused for a bit upon a slanting roof just to look around. Oh, the smuts, how they settled upon his feathers! he was obliged to preen himself, he felt so dirty; if his coat was a dingy brown, there was no occasion for its being dirty also!
He would, I knew, first look round before he settled himself to preen his feathers on the branch, and, if everything was still while that keen inspection lasted, would never notice me. This is their habit and the closer you are underneath them the less chance of their perceiving you: for a pigeon perched rarely looks straight downwards.
He went, and Robert was at last able to remove his coat, mop his perspiring brow, and release the crushed and dishevelled Phoenix. Robert had to arrange his damp hair at the looking-glass at the back of the box, and the Phoenix had to preen its disordered feathers for some time before either of them was fit to be seen. They were very, very early.
He took life as he found it; but he did not excuse it and himself with the familiar hypocrisies that make the comfortable classes preen themselves on being the guardians and saviours of the ignorant, incapable masses. When old Lockyer said one day that this was the function of the "upper classes," Norman retorted: "Perhaps. But, if so, how do they perform it?
That we build houses? So do they. That we remember and reason? So, again, do they. That we converse? They are chatterboxes, whose lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no possible point of superiority can we preen ourselves save this: that we can laugh, and that they, with one notable exception, cannot. We have. Away with any one of us who hasn't!
I will look about and find some seclusion that thou mayest look and sate thine eyes upon Royalty; and thou wilt gaze and gaze and make mental annotations, and to-morrow thou wilt begin to preen thy feathers preparatory to flying forth; but first thou must lie down and sleep three full hours, 'tis then the ball will be at its height, and thou wilt feel refreshed and ready to amuse me with thy observations.
On the worn old stone pavement white pigeons strut and preen themselves, puffing out their chests with the most absurd air of self-satisfaction. There are steps down from the terrace, and at the bottom there is a great bed of carnations, red and white and yellow, and their fragrance meets you like a wall of perfume as you pass." "There should be violets," he interrupted. "Where are your violets?
False visions alone sped through you, though Cupid was wont to light on your topmost bar, and preen his glowing plumes. And to think that I should see her once more, coming down the path as if not a day had passed, hesitating as of old, and then but surely her ankles seem Confound that scarecrow!...
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