Diamond Dyke. George Manville Fenn

the effect of sending him off remonstrating angrily, as if he resented such liberties being taken with his ribs. For he turned when he reached the fence, and stood fluttering his short wings, clucking, and making threatening gestures with his head.

      The hen bird sitting was much more amenable to their approach, for, after a little persuasion, she rose in a very stately way, blinked her rather human-looking, eye-lashed optics, and stalked to the other wives to stand with them, hissing and cackling a little, while the bad eggs were removed and the fresh thirty-nine were put in their place, Emson arranging them as regularly as he could in accordance with the bird’s habits.

      But as Dyke handed them to him one by one, they had hard work to get them in on account of the impatience displayed by the wives, two of which displayed a great eagerness to have first sit upon the nestful, and needing to be kept off until all were ready.

      Then began a severe quarrel, and a good deal of pecking before the youngest and strongest succeeded in mounting upon the nest, shuffling the eggs about so as to get them more in accordance with her own idea of the fitness of things, and then, when all were in order, she settled down with her plumage regularly covering up the eggs, while the other birds now looked on.

      “Do you double up your perambulators?” said Dyke mockingly. “Yes, madam, I see you do; but pray don’t put a toe through either of the shells.”

      The hen uttered a strangely soft clucking kind of noise, as if in reply, and there was a peculiar look of satisfaction about the huge tame creature as she covered the gigantic clutch.

      “So they are,” said Dyke—“something like eggs, aren’t they?—I say, look at the others,” he continued, as they stalked off to go apparently to discuss the new arrivals with the cock bird over at the other side of the enclosure.

      “There,” said Emson, “you can have these addled eggs cleaned out, Dyke, and we’ll make chunking cups of them. When shall we fetch the other lot? This evening?”

      “If you like.”

      “No; we’ll leave it till to-morrow, and give the nags a rest.”