Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/137

Rh his wings as if for flight, poised, then settled defiantly down again.

“You are no good,” said I, “you won’t help even with a word.”

He sat stolidly unconcerned. Then I heard the lapwings in the meadow crying, crying. They seemed to seek the storm, yet to rail at it. They wheeled in the wind, yet never ceased to complain of it. They enjoyed the struggle, and lamented it in wild lament, through which came a sound of exultation. All the lapwings cried, cried the same tale, “Bitter, bitter, the struggle—for nothing, nothing, nothing,”—and all the time they swung about on their broad wings, revelling.

“There,” said I to the crow, “they try it, and find it bitter, but they wouldn’t like to miss it, to sit still like you, you old corpse.”

He could not endure this. He rose in defiance, flapped his wings, and launched off, uttering one “Caw” of sinister foreboding. He was soon whirled away.

I discovered that I was very cold, so I went downstairs.

Twisting a curl round his finger, one of those loose curls that always dance free from the captured hair, Leslie said:

“Look how fond your hair is of me; look how it twines round my finger. Do you know, your hair—the light in it is like—oh—buttercups in the sun.”

“It is like me.—it won’t be kept in bounds,” she replied.

“Shame if it were—like this, it brushes my face—so—and sets me tingling like music.”