Yes, it was a bird. It was Joey. It was the grey-brown peacock with a
blue neck. He was snow-wet and spent.
'Joey--Joey, de-urr!' I said, staggering unevenly towards him. He looked
so pathetic, rowing and struggling in the snow, too spent to rise, his
blue neck stretching out and lying sometimes on the snow, his eye closing
and opening quickly, his crest all battered.
'Joey dee-uur! Dee-urr!' I said caressingly to him. And at last he lay
still, blinking, in the surged and furrowed snow, whilst I came near and
touched him, stroked him, gathered him under my arm. He stretched his
long, wetted neck away from me as I held him, none the less he was quiet
in my arm, too tired, perhaps, to struggle. Still he held his poor,
crested head away from me, and seemed sometimes to droop, to wilt, as if
he might suddenly die.
He was not so heavy as I expected, yet it was a struggle to get up to the
house with him again. We set him down, not too near the fire, and gently
wiped him with cloths. He submitted, only now and then stretched his soft
neck away from us, avoiding us helplessly. Then we set warm food by him.
I _put_ it to his beak, tried to make him eat. But he ignored it. He
seemed to be ignorant of what we were doing, recoiled inside himself
inexplicably. So we put him in a basket with cloths, and left him
crouching oblivious. His food we put near him. The blinds were drawn, the
house was warm, it was night.
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