"What vigour, what verve, what health," thought Peter, watching
her, "what--lean, fresh, fragrant health!" And he had, no
doubt, his emotions.
She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able,
somehow, to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches.
She would make a diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her
empty right hand; and the too-greedy sparrows would dart off,
avid, on that false lead. Whereupon, quickly, stealthily, she
would rain a little shower of crumbs, from her left hand, on
the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches assembled
there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly
black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a
kind of restrained ferocity, to "shoo" him away, without
thereby frightening the finches.
And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her
cheeks; and there was the forceful, graceful action of her
body.
When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together
gently, to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at
Peter, and smiled significantly.
"Yes," he acknowledged, "you outwitted them very skilfully.
You, at any rate, have no need of a dragon."
"Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon's work oneself,"
she answered lightly. "Or, rather, one can make oneself an
instrument of justice."
"All the same, I should call it uncommonly hard luck to be born
a sparrow--within your jurisdiction," he said.
"It is not an affair of luck," said she. "One is born a
sparrow--within my jurisdiction--for one's sins in a former
state.--No, you little dovelings"--she turned to a pair of
finches on the greensward near her, who were lingering, and
gazing up into her face with hungry, expectant eyes--"I have no
more. I have given you my all." And she stretched out her
open hands, palms downwards, to convince them.
"The sparrows got nothing; and the goldfinches, who got 'your
all,' grumble because you gave so little," said Peter, sadly.
"That is what comes of interfering with the laws of Nature."
And then, as the two birds flew away, "See the dark, doubtful,
reproachful glances with which they cover you."
"You think they are ungrateful?" she said. "No--listen."
She held up a finger.
For, at that moment, on the branch of an acacia, just over her
head, a goldfinch began to sing--his thin, sweet, crystalline
trill of song.
"Do you call that grumbling?" she asked.