He began with misgivings at the three-pound carcass, and
he ended with an entirely new feeling of stuffed satisfaction. He
explored at will into its structure, and he found succulent morsels
which he had never dreamed of as existing in this particular bird, for
his experience had never before gone beyond a leg of duck and thinly
carved slices of breast of duck, at from eighty cents to a dollar and a
quarter an order. He would have been ashamed of himself when he had
finished had it not been that Father Roland seemed only at the
beginning, and was turning the vigour of his attack from duck to rabbit
and onion. From then on David kept him company by drinking a third cup
of coffee.
When he had finished Father Roland settled back with a sigh of content,
and drew a worn buckskin pouch from one of the voluminous pockets of his
trousers. Out of this he produced a black pipe and tobacco. At the same
time Thoreau was filling and lighting his own. In his studies and
late-hour work at home David himself had been a pipe smoker, but of late
his pipe had been distasteful to him, and it had been many weeks since
he had indulged in anything but cigars and an occasional cigarette. He
looked at the placid satisfaction in the Little Missioner's face, and
saw Thoreau's head wreathed in smoke, and he felt for the first time in
those weeks the return of his old desire.
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