44 THE PIGEON-FANCIER. 



replacing them with better specimens. It was 

 hard to part with those early purchases. It felt 

 like betraying old friends to sell them. There 

 was no alternative. I was awake : the dream 

 of their beauty had vanished from me. I saw 

 a bull-eye was ugliness, and a dirty thigh an 

 abomination to be got rid of. The first pair of 

 eggs laid transported me into the wonderland of 

 mystery and delight. I handled them cautiously 

 every time I entered the shed. How I teased the 

 setting birds by my inquisitive intrusion upon the 

 privacy of their domestic duties. They charged 

 me fiercely with beak and wing. I was too 

 curious to be denied. Impatiently I waited for 

 those eggs to transform themselves into pigeons 

 — they did hatch with all my meddling. It 

 seemed the only object I had to live for at the 

 time. At last the young ones broke out of their 

 house of bondage, and introduced themselves as 

 large as life into the world of living creatures. 

 I was enraptured — it was the first natural in- 

 crease of my stock. The old shed soon became 

 too strait. 



My father had silently and complacently 

 watched the new hobby — it succeeded admirably 

 from his point of view : it kept me at home in 

 the evening, and away from the contamination 



