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 that is simply
indescribable, being indeed too revolting for words.

Then, as the father still wavers, his son makes some observations
which I cannot quite follow, but take to be on the fairness of the
game as played with a sportsbird, and the certainty that the luck must
turn sooner or later. After which he exhorts him--this time in plain
English--to "be a bird." Whereupon the doting old parent decides that
he _will_ be a bird and back the middle thimble, and the next moment I
hear the son exclaim, evidently referring to the rook, "No, '_e_'s got
it; no, '_e_'s got it. Cheer up! Cheer up!" with a perfunctory
concern that is but a poor disguise for indecent exultation. I am not
suggesting, by the way, that birds are in the habit of dropping their
"h's"--but _this_ one does. There are times when he is so elated by
his parent's defeat that he cannot repress an outburst of inarticulate
devilry. And so the game goes on, minute after minute, hour after
hour, every day from dawn to dusk. The amount of grains or grubs or
whatever the stakes may be (and it is not likely that any rook would
play for love), that that old idiot must have lost even since I have
been here, is beyond all calculation. He has never once been allowed
to spot the right thimble, but he _will_ go on. As to the son's motive
in permitting it, any bird of the world would tell you that, if you
possess a senile parent who is bound to be rooked by somebody, it
had better be by a person with whom you can come to a previous
arrangement.

Now I come to think of it, though, I have not heard the unnatural