"
But the husband responded more than half to himself,
"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh."
When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much
fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier
generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign
over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back
room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might
stand for.
"Doze? Ah, doze make only Pas-Trop-Bon."
I appealed to his wife; but she, with her placid laugh, would only confirm
him:
"Yass; Pastropbon; he like that name. Tha's all de way I call him--
Pastropbon."
III
The hummingbird was ready for me. I will not try to tell how lifelike and
beautiful the artist had made it. Even with him I took pains to be
somewhat reserved. As I stood holding and admiring the small green wonder,
I remarked that I was near having to bring him that morning another and
yet finer bird. A shade of displeasure (and, I feared, of suspicion also)
came to his face as he asked me how that was. I explained.
Going into my front hall, whose veranda-door framed in a sunny picture of
orange-boughs, jasmine-vines, and white-clouded blue sky, I had found a
male ruby-throat circling about the ceiling, not wise enough to stoop, fly
low, and pass out by the way it had come in.
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