"And yet he's no fool either, sir; of the three he's the cleverest."
He only nodded, his head full of a notion that still occupied him after he got home; Azor lay at his feet and watched him thinking, thinking all day long. At nightfall he took the dog's head between his hands.
"There!" he cried merrily, "you'll be pleased with your old master this time."
Three days later he bought a go-cart, in which he installed Pierre, and every morning they used to set out for the country, Azor scouting ahead and his master following with the child in tow.
The old schoolmaster would explain all they saw to him--animals and things; he had made him a present of an alphabet with coloured pictures where a yacht stood for Y and a zebra for Z. And Pierre soon learnt to read.
On Sundays, instead of three, they were seven; the whole family would join the expedition, and they would linger on till dark in the starlit fields.
They were very happy, and their happiness lasted many long years.
His plumage was glossy and abundant, his eye alert, his claws long and strong; in all points he was everything a handsome young owl should be. For two years he had slept snug under his mother's wing, the fond object of her jealous care; but when spring came round again, his father, who was a very sententious bird, addressed him in these terms--
"You are grown up now, and the time is come when we must part. The nest would be too small to hold both you and those who will come after you. Moreover, no owl is ever happy save as head of a household. All sorts of trials and tribulations await us; men feel nothing but anger and contempt for our race. No matter for the watch and ward we keep over the orchards, the war of extermination we wage on the prolific broods that devastate the wheat, for all our well-meant efforts to aid the harvests to grow and the fruit-trees to bloom, our only guerdon is to be shot at with guns. Alas! the most of us end by being nailed up to a barn-door, with spread-eagled wings. A wife and family will console you under all this cruel injustice. Year by year your heart will grow green again amid the joys of domesticity, and you will attach a higher value to life when you no longer stand alone to bear its burden. So quit the nest, as I did before you; choose a good helpmeet of your own age, and may you be happy together, as we are, your mother and I."