manipulate frail and tiny things and bring forth delicate results, he
looked into my face and asked, with a sort of magisterial gentleness:

"How she git kill', dat lill' bird?"

I told him. I could feel my mood and words take their tone from him,
though he outwardly heard me through with no show of feeling; and when I
finished, I knew we were friends. I presently ventured to praise the
specimen of his skill nearest at hand; a wild turkey listening alarmedly
as if it would the next instant utter that ringing "quit!" which makes
each separate drop of a hunter's blood tingle. But with an odd languor in
his gravity, he replied:

"Naw, dass not well make; lill' bit worse, bad enough to put in front
window. I take you inside; come."



II


We passed through into a private workroom immediately behind the shop. His
wife sat there sewing; a broad, motherly woman of forty-five, fat,
tranquil, kind, with an old eye, a young voice, and a face that had got
its general flabbiness through much paddling and gnawing from other
women's teething babes. She sat still, unintroduced, but welcomed me with
a smile.

I was saying to her husband that a hummingbird was a very small thing to
ask him to stuff. But he stopped me with his lifted palm.