f fact I have merely heard a few short
remarks--and those were all spoken by the son. But, as everyone knows,
even a single sentence accidentally overheard by an observant stranger
may give him a clearer insight into the unknown, and possibly unseen,
speaker's character than could be gained from countless chapters of a
modern analytical novel.

So these four sentences were quite enough for _me_. Perhaps I should
mention here that the three personages in this drama are birds--which
makes it all the more painful.

Like many of our British birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops
into English, or I should never have understood what was going on.
He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all
_their_ remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he
would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and
I should have believed him--once. Hardly now, after he has so airily
exposed his title as an authority; but even as it is I should not
dream of questioning his statement that "the egg of course is
rather more speckled," because I can well believe that the egg this
bird--whatever he is--came from was very badly speckled indeed.

It seems that, some time ago--I can't say when exactly, but it was
before I came down here--this unnatural son introduced to the parental
abode (which I think is either No. 5 or No. 6 in a row of young
chestnuts abutting on the high road) a rook of more than dubious
reputation, whom he persuaded his unsuspecting sire to put up for
the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have
neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's _there_. I am unable
to give the precise date on which he first led the conversation to the
good old English game of "rigging the thimble"--that also was before I
came. All I can state with certainty is that he interested his host in
it so effectually that now the infatuated old fool is playing it all
day long.

This is evident from his son's conversation; during the pause which
invariably precedes it I should undoubtedly hear the father-bird (if
he would only speak up--which he doesn't) quavering, "I'm not sure,
my boy, I'm not _sure_, but I've a notion that, _this_ time, he's left
the pea under the _middle_ thimble--eh?"

On which the young scoundrel, knowing well that it is elsewhere,
pipes out, "There it _is_, Fa-ther, there it _is_, Fa-ther!" with
an unctuous humility shading into impatient contempt th