THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
with a characteristic gesture, patted him on the arm, exclaiming:
“How admirably you have put it, my dear Monsieur Brierley; I have to thank you most sincerely. Ah! you Americans are always clear and to the point. May I add one more word? That which made these birds so cunning was the fact that you were out to kill them.” Here he straightened up, his back to the fire, and stood with the light of its blaze tingeing his gray beard. “It’s a foolish fancy, I know, but I would have liked to have lived, if only for one day, with the man Adam, just to see how he and Madame Eve and the Noah’s ark family got on before they began quarrelling and Cain made a hole in the head of the other monsieur. I have an idea that the lion and the lamb ate out of the same trough, with the birds on their backs for company—all the world at peace. My Coco rubs his beak against my cheek, not because I feed him, but because he trusts me; he would, I am sure, bite a piece out of Monsieur Louis’ because he does not trust him—and with reason,” and the old man smiled good-naturedly. “But why don’t they all trust us?”
Herbert, who had also for some reason en-
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