rrots are very
human.

"Viva Costaguana!" he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and,
instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up
somnolence behind the glittering wires.

"And do you believe that, Charley?" Mrs. Gould asked. "This seems to me
most awful materialism, and--"

"My dear, it's nothing to me," interrupted her husband, in a reasonable
tone. "I make use of what I see. What's it to me whether his talk is the
voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There's a good
deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The
air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have
you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here--?"

"Oh, but that's different," protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked. The
allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked
very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome
mine. "How can you compare them, Charles?" she exclaimed, reproachfully.
"He has suffered--and yet he hopes."

The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was very
surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they
showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.

Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once
his wife's anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He
was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both
kinds of eloquence--"if it were worth while to try," he added, grimly.
But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had
done for three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His
poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she
remembered a passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr.
Gould had expressed the conviction that "God looked wrathfully at these
countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in
the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over
the Queen of Continents."

Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. "You read it to me, Charley," she
murmured. "It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must
have felt its terrible sadness!"

"He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him," said Charles Gould.
"But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good
faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about these things, but I
pin my faith to material interests. On