Peyron's
cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island,
had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there
lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the
greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by
huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on
the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his
appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied
Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for
the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves,
did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so
long accustomed.
Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool
down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M.
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