She
had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they
were not like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil
persons save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like
the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made
it their purpose to destroy life--in this case harmless feathered
creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify
these propensities--at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards
their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family.
With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as
much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living
birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she
broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie
where she had found them till the game-keepers should come--as they
probably would come--to look for them a second time.
"Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth
in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears
running down as she killed the birds tenderly. "And not a twinge of
bodily pain about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and
I have two hands to feed and clothe me.
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