51 



bought it oil the spot, and later on I will describe the 

 lady. I felt, as I walked away, as proud as a cock on 

 a wall. I had a very fine cock Pastor at home, so 

 I was full of hope for the future. 



My cock knows he is handsome, and I believe 

 that if he had a looking-glass handy he would always 

 be using it. Much like a man I heard about one day, 

 who happened to be the first arrival at a dinner 

 party : on being shewn into the drawing-room and 

 finding it, as he thought, empty, he soliloquised thus, in 

 the presence of a young lady member of the family, 

 hidden away in a recess. Going up to a large mirror 

 over the mantlepiece, adjusting his tie and striking an 

 attitude, he exclaimed, 'Not positively handsome, but 

 confoundedly genteel.' My cock always seems to be 

 saying the same, as he flicks his handsome wings and 

 struts about the floor — ' Not perhaps positively hand- 

 some, but decidedly genteel.' Whenever the cock 

 alights on the ground, he keeps flicking his wings. 

 Why he does so I do not know — ' arrested mental 

 development,' I suppose, — good way of explaining 

 anything you do not understand in a bird's conduct. 



I am never tired of watching my Pastors. ' Give 

 you some birds,' said a friend one day in a bitter 

 mood, ' and a wall to lean against, and you settle into 

 an easefulness that would madden a saint.' 



The cock reminds me of different people at 

 different times. Just now, as I catch him on a top- 

 most bough and looking down on me with his aloof 

 superior air, he is oddh^ like a family butler, grown 

 grey in service. At times, too, he seems to be like a 

 Bishop of the decorous and persuasive order, but more 

 often still he is the unique combination of the Bishop 

 and the family butler which we are so rarely privileged 

 to meet in daily life. 



Rose Pastors are always ' nagging.' Any excuse 



