Pagina 293 de 788

After this decisive consultation, held with herself, she called

from the window to Zosia, who was playing in the garden.

Zosia was standing bareheaded in her morning gown, holding a

sieve aloft in her hands; the barnyard fowls were running to her

feet. From one side the rough-feathered hens came rolling like

balls of yarn; from the other the crested cocks, shaking the

coral helms upon their heads and oaring themselves with their

wings over the furrows and through the bushes, stretched out

broadly their spurred feet; behind them slowly advanced a

puffed-up turkey cock, fretting at the complaints of his

garrulous spouse; there the peacocks, like rafts, steered

themselves over the meadow with their long tails, and here and

there a silver-winged dove would fall from on high like a tassel

of snow. In the middle of the circle of greensward extended a

noisy, moving circle of birds, girt round with a belt of doves,

like a white ribbon, mottled with stars, spots, and stripes. Here

amber beaks and there coral crests rose from the thick mass of

feathers like fish from the waves.