THE FLYING CLOWN 



plainly, for she was moving. She looked like a wounded 

 bird, and the man, thinking he must have hurt her in 

 some way, followed her to pick her up and see what the 

 trouble was. Three times he almost got her. Almost, 

 but not quite. Crippled as she seemed, she could still 

 fumble and flutter just out of reach; and when at last 

 the man had followed her to a corner of the roof far 

 from her young, Mother Nomer sprang up, and spread- 

 ing her long, pointed wings, took flight, whole and sound 

 as a bird need be. 



The man understood and laughed. He laughed at 

 himself for being fooled. For it was n't the first time a 

 bird had tricked him so. Once, when he was a country 

 boy, a partridge, fluttering as if broken-winged, had led 

 him through the underbrush of the wood-lot ; and once 

 a bird by the river-side stumbled on before him, crying 

 piteously, ^'Pete! Pete! Pete-weet!'' and once — Why, 

 yes, he should have remembered that this is the trick of 

 many a mother-bird when danger threatens her young. 



So he went back, with careful step, to where he had 

 been before. He looked this way and that. There was 

 no nest. He saw no young. The little Nomer twins 

 were not the son and daughter of Mis, the clown, and 

 Mother Nomer, the trick cripple, for nothing ! They sat 

 there, the little rascals, right before his eyes, and budged 

 not; they could practice the art of camouflage, too. 



143 



