'Where will you sit?' asked its owner, looking round. 'There isn't anything nice enough for you. I must look up a special chair for you to occupy when you come here. How do you like my room?'
'I like it--very much,' said Esther slowly, turning her eyes from one strange object to another.
'Nobody comes here but me, so we shall have no interruption to fear. When you come to see me, Queen Esther, you will just go straight through the house, out on the piazza, and up these stairs, with out asking anybody; and then you will turn the handle of the door and come in, without knocking. If I am here, well and good; if I am not here, wait for me. You like my deer's horns? I got them up in Canada, where I have been on hunting expeditions with my father.'
'Some of them. But that great elk head I bought.'
'That? That is the white-headed eagle--the American eagle.'
'No; I shot him not far from here, one day, by great luck.'
'Rather. I sat half a day in a booth made with branches, to get the chance. There were several of them about that day, so I lay in wait. They are not very plenty just about here. That other fellow is the great European lammergeyer.'
Esther had placed herself on one of the hard wooden chairs, but now she rose and went nearer the birds, standing before them in great admiration. Slowly then she went from one thing in the room to another, pausing to contemplate each. A beautiful white owl, very large and admirably mounted, held her eyes for some time.
'That is the Great Northern Owl,' observed her companion. 'They are found far up in the regions around the North Pole, and only now and then come so far south as this.'
'Talons. Yes, they would carry off a rabbit very easily.'
'I don't doubt that fellow has carried off many a one, as well as hosts of smaller fry--squirrels, mice, and birds.'
'He looks cruel,' observed Esther, with an abhorrent motion of her shoulders.
'He does, rather. But he is no more cruel than all the rest.'
'The rest of what?' said Esther, turning towards him.
'The rest of creation--all the carnivorous portion of it, I mean.'
'Are they all like that? they don't look so. The eyes of pigeons, for instance, are quite different.'
'Oh!' said Esther wonderingly. 'No, I know; they eat bread and grain; and canary birds eat seeds. Are there _many_ birds that live on flesh?'