8o BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



effort, just a little more desperate than before, and just too 

 much for his balance, for clown he came with a kind of 

 somersault into the garden. And to see him on the ground, 

 how he shook himself and looked round ; how affronted he 

 was, and how pompous ! If he walked stiffly before, he was now 

 positively on wires. If haughty in demeanour at all times, he 

 was now as superciliously superb as Tamburlane. He moved, 

 like Shakespeare's peacock, with ''a stride and a stand," the 

 very personification of magnificence embarrassed. And in 

 obedience to his call the two hens, who had been staring from 

 the top of the wall, astonished at the sudden falling-off in 

 stateliness of their dandified emperor, flew down, and he led 

 them off, loftily explaining as he went his reasons for his new 

 method of orettintr down from a wall, and the advantages that 

 the intelligent derived from such originalities of procedure. 



