little place you’ve got here,’ says Mother Cuckoo to the little bird, smiling all down both sides of her head as she speaks, for you know, Warlock, you couldn’t make a cuckoo’s mouth much bigger without cutting her head off. ‘Nice little place!’
“ ‘Yes,’ says the little bird, feeling much flattered.
“ ‘And such a cosy warm well-lined nest!’
“ ‘Yes,’ says the little bird again, ‘my husband and I did that.’
“ ‘How clever. And the nest is so well hidden!’
“ ‘Oh, yes, that is the best of it. There are no cats about, and wicked schoolboys would never think of looking here for a nest.’
“ ‘It isn’t a very large nest!’
“ ‘Oh, it is big enough for our little family.’
“ ‘Let me see,’ says Mother Cuckoo, ‘you have three eggs laid already. How clever of you!’
“ ‘Yes, and I’m going to lay another.’
“ ‘Your husband’s from home to-day, isn’t he?’
“ ‘He has gone to the woods for a certain kind of beetle that I’ve set my heart upon.’
“ ‘Oh, dear!’ says sly Mother Cuckoo, ‘I do feel so faint; all over of a tremble. Do, like a dear little mite, go and find my husband. He is in the copse down by the miller’s pond. I’ll sit here and keep your eggs warm till you return.’
“But the little bird never finds Father Cuckoo, and when she comes back, lo! old Mother Cuckoo has gone, but the sly bird has left an egg bigger and different from any in the nest. And that egg seems to throw a glamour over the little bird; she feels compelled to hatch it, and to rear the little one when it comes out to the neglect of her own family, for the young cuckoo is such a powerful eater that it takes both the little bird and her husband all their time to gather insects for it and stuff them down its gaping throat, and—”
“Now, Dick,” cried Warlock, “if you’re quite done we would like to hear Shireen’s story; you may fly to Persia with the cuckoos in August if you like, and—”
“And perhaps never come home again,” said Tabby; “don’t you go, Dick, don’t you go.”
From all I can recollect of Persia, said Shireen, it is a very beautiful country in summer-time, although away high up in the mountain fastnesses of the North, terrible snowstorms sometimes blow, and here dwell tribes and clans of wild Persian Highlanders that are at war with all the world.
Yet, strange to say, these wild men are kind to their cats, and pussy in these regions is looked upon as quite one of the family.
But it was not in these wilds that I first saw the light of day, or any other light, children, but far away in what my mother called the sunny South.
“Much game there, mother?” asked Warlock, pricking both his ears.
“I’ll come to that presently, Warlock, you mustn’t interrupt, you know.”
My very earliest recollections then, you must know, are all centred in my mother. This is only natural. Besides, my mother was very beautiful indeed. My little brother and I—we were both born at the same time—disagreed about many matters connected with domestic life and family arrangements, but we were both of the same opinion concerning mother’s beauty. I was very young when I first opened my eyes, but I have only to close them again now, and mother rises up before me in all her loveliness. White were the snows that capped the jagged hills of the Zarda Koo, no snows could be whiter, but more spotless still, I thought, was the coat of my dam. Blue were the rifts between the clouds in the autumn, but bluer and brighter my mother’s eyes. Then every movement she made was graceful and easy. Was it any wonder that brother and I loved her, or that we sometimes fought for the best place in her arms?
Looking back through the long vista of years, I cannot help thinking that perhaps my mother loved my brother better than me. I am sure she spent more time in licking him, but then I may be wrong, for I was restless, and would at any time rather have romped with mother’s tail than submitted to her caresses when they took the shape of licking my face and ears with her tongue. Besides, brother had a black spot on his brow, which mother thought she would succeed in licking off. So she would lick and lick and lick until she fell back tired and exhausted on the cushion of crimson silk that formed our bed.
I did not know then the value that human beings attached to a cushion like this. Nor the value of anything around me.
Everything, brother and I believed, belonged to mother, the whole universe, as far as we had yet seen it, belonged to her, and the slaves that came softly stealing across the thick carpets and placed mother’s food before her in dishes of solid gold and silver, were, in our opinion, if we thought about the matter at all, only creatures of common clay that lived and moved and had their beings merely to minister to mother’s wants and needs.
I am much wiser now, children, and I can tell you that the splendid apartments where mother lived when we were very young, were furnished with splendour and elegance, unknown to this land of cloudy skies and misty rain.
That silk cushion, children, on which mother lay, was richly embroidered with threads of gold, and tasselled with pearls and precious stones. The room itself was lofty, and hung everywhere with curtains of rarest value. Great punkahs, moved by invisible hands, depended from the roof, and, waving to and fro, kept us cool. Costly vases and musical instruments stood here and there, and couches of pale-blue silk and silver were ranged along the walls. There was a dim religious light throughout, and from an arched window we could catch glimpses of gardens filled with lovely flowers and fruit, and watered by cool fountains that threw their snow-white spray far up against the blue of the sky. And everywhere the air was laden with the rich and rare odour of orange and citron blooms.
Then on the soft Persian carpets, I was afterwards told, my brother and I used to play with rubies as large as marbles.
“Something to eat?” said Dick, thoughtfully.
“No, Dick, a ruby is nothing to eat, but it is something held so sacred by human beings, that one such precious stone would buy all the fine things a man could use in a long, long lifetime.”
Now, some weeks after brother and I opened our eyes, we learned to lap milk. It was difficult to do this at first, though we wanted to, because our eyes were not yet strong enough to judge distances, and sometimes when we thought we were licking the milk we were only lapping the air; then when we put our heads further down our noses went into the silver saucer up to the eyes, and we thought we were drowned, and sprang up and sneezed.
While trying one day to lap some milk, we noticed that mother was singing to a very pretty human being, who sat cross-legged upon a low ottoman. Mother was singing, and she was also rubbing her head backwards and forwards against this lovely human creature’s bare arm. Brother and I sat back and looked up in astonishment, although looking up made our heads so light that we nearly tumbled.
“Oh! aren’t they funny, funny, funny?” cried a voice. It was that of the beautiful human being.
The words only sounded to us like rippling music then, music such as the birds in their golden cages made, and the spray of the fountain splashing down and falling into its marble basin. But mother afterwards translated the language to us.
Day after day now this human being sat there cross-legged on the ottoman, and we soon began to like her as much as mother did.
She was very young and very beautiful, her little mouth was a rosebud, her eyes were very large, but jetty black, not blue like mother’s. She was dressed in robes of flowing silk of many colours, and when she walked, glittering chains of gold and precious stones jangled and rang. Beside her often stood a tall and powerful man-human, as dark as night, with fierce red eyes, white flashing teeth, and a girdle around his waist, from which hung an ugly half-moon knife. Brother and I were much afraid of this man-human.