Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“The cuckoo’s a shy bird, isn’t it?”

“Ah, very shy. Don’t often catch sight on it, though you hear it pretty often at certain seasons of the year. It makes no nest of its own, but lays its eggs in the hedge-sparrer’s nest, and the sparrow sits on it, and warms it, and hatches it along with its own eggs; so the young cuckoo is brought up with the young sparrers, and when he gets strong and hungry he gets spiteful, too, and hoists all the t’others out of the nest, and so gets all the food hisself. It ain’t fair, but there’s a good many things done in this ’ere world that ain’t quite the thing.”

“By men as well as birds, my lad,” remarked the gentleman.

“You’re right, sir, by men and women too,” returned the lad, who was still mindful of his shrew of a mistress.

“You are really quite an oracle.”

“Well, sir, which will you buy?” said Alf, who by this time had come to the conclusion that he had wasted a sufficient number of words without any purport. “Which would you like best? The hedge chaffinch is the prettiest, but the golden-crested wren and the cuckoos are the rarest.”