Every now
and again a big peacock would separate himself from the mob and take
a stately turn or two about the lawn, or perhaps mount for a moment
upon the rail, and there shrilly publish to the world his
satisfaction with himself and what he had to eat. It happened, for
my sins, that none of these admirable birds had anything beyond the
merest rudiment of a tail. Tails, it seemed, were out of season just
then. But they had their necks for all that; and by their necks
alone they do as much surpass all the other birds of our grey climate
as they fall in quality of song below the blackbird or the lark.
Surely the peacock, with its incomparable parade of glorious colour
and the scannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from its
painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies at Great
Missenden, have been invented by some skilful fabulist for the
consolation and support of homely virtue: or rather, perhaps, by a
fabulist not quite so skilful, who made points for the moment without
having a studious enough eye to the complete effect; for I thought
these melting greens and blues so beautiful that afternoon, that I
would have given them my vote just then before the sweetest pipe in
all the spring woods.
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