Kitabı oku: «The Wood-Pigeons and Mary»
Chapter One.
“Such Big Tears.”
“Mary is crying,” said Mr Coo.
“No!” replied Mrs Coo.
But Mr Coo said again —
“Mary is crying,” and though Mrs Coo repeated —
“No!” she knew by the way he held his head on one side and looked at her, that he was very much in earnest indeed.
I must tell you that when Mrs Coo said ‘no,’ it went off into a soft sound that was almost like ‘coo’; indeed most of her talking, and of Mr Coo’s too, sounded like that, which is the reason, I daresay, that many people would not have understood their conversation. But it would be rather tiresome to write “no,” or other words, with double o’s at the end, so I will leave it to be fancied, which will do just as well. There is a great deal of conversation in the world which careless people don’t understand; a great deal which no one can understand properly, however much they try; but also a great deal that one can get to understand, if one tries, even without the gift which the dear fairy bestowed on the very lucky prince in the long ago story. I forget his name, but I daresay some of you remember it. The gift was the power to understand all that the beasts and birds say.
This very morning the wind has been talking to me a good deal – it was the south wind, and her stories are always very sweet, though sometimes sad, yet I understand a good deal of them.
After this second “No,” Mr and Mrs Coo sat looking at each other for a moment or two, without speaking.
Then said Mr Coo —
“It must be something – serious. For Mary scarcely ever cries.”
“True,” said Mrs Coo, “true.”
But she did not say anything more, only she too held her head on one side and kept her reddy-brown eyes fixed on Mr Coo. They seemed to ask, “What is to be done?” only as she nearly always depended on Mr Coo for settling what was to be done or if anything was to be done, she did not need to say the words.
“Mary scarcely ever cries,” he repeated. “There were large drops, quite large ones on her cheeks.”
“As large as raindrops?” asked Mrs Coo.
“Larger – that is to say as large as large raindrops – the kind that come when it thunders,” said Mr Coo.
“Oh dear,” sighed Mrs Coo, thinking to herself that Mary’s trouble must be a very bad one indeed if her tears were so large. She wanted very much for once, to ask what could be done, but she saw that Mr Coo was considering very deeply, so she did not interrupt his thoughts.
At last he turned to her.
“I heard something,” he said. “Very little, but enough to help me to put two and two together.”
“To make four,” said Mrs Coo quickly. She felt rather proud of her arithmetic, though she did not understand what Mr Coo could mean, as she had never heard the saying before. “Four what, my dear?”
“Four nothing,” was the reply – rather a cross one. “It is an expression. You are not as used to human talk as I am, you see,” he went on more amiably, for it is not the way with the Coo family ever to be cross for more than a moment, and if ever they are, they are sorry immediately. “Never mind about the two and two. What I heard was only a few words, but it has decided me that I must hear more, for,” and here Mr Coo’s tone grew very solemn, “it had to do with us!”
Mrs Coo was so startled that she repeated Mr Coo’s words, which was one of the few things that tried his temper.
“It had to do with us,” she said. “How could that be? We have never done anything that could make Mary cry, especially such very large tears.”
“Yes,” said Mr Coo, “we have done one thing. We have left the Square Gardens.”
“But that was some time ago,” said Mrs Coo, “and she did not cry when very sweetly.”
Mr Coo gave what was for him a little cough – a sort of “h’m.”
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I have never felt perfectly sure that she understood my explanation that day. Still, you are right so far. I have seen her several times since then, and though she was putting her head out of the window as far as she dared, and looking towards our tree, where the nest is already falling to pieces, she was certainly not crying.”
“Perhaps she saw you yourself, and felt sure we had not really left for good?”
“No,” said Mr Coo, “she did not see me the day she put her head so far out of the window. I was watching her, for I was a little afraid she might already be missing us. But she only looked at the tree and seemed quite happy.”
“Is it since then that the nest has fallen to pieces, do you think, Mr Coo?” asked Mrs Coo.
She was rather a clever little wood-pigeon after all, though Mr Coo scarcely thought so.
“Yes,” he replied. “There was a great deal of wind last night and the night before – I fancy the wind blew it down. This morning there is almost nothing to be seen of it.”
“Then that was why Mary was crying,” exclaimed Mrs Coo.
But again Mr Coo shook his head, or at least turned it to the other side, which meant that he did not agree with Mrs Coo.
“That would not explain the words I heard,” he said.
“What were they?”
“She was crying,” Mr Coo replied, “crying and leaning against the window, and the window was open, and I heard her say, ‘He doesn’t believe me, he doesn’t believe me. It’s too bad of the Cooies – ’ she calls us the Cooies, you know, my dear.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Coo, nodding her head gently, “I know.”
“It’s too bad of the Cooies,” she said again, Mr Coo went on. ”‘I believe they’re not Cooies at all, but very unkind, tricky fairies.’ She said that– she really did.”
“Dear, dear, it’s very sad, very sad indeed,” said Mrs Coo, and her voice was exceedingly low and mournful. “Mary to think that of us. Something must be done, Mr Coo, something must be done.”
“Of course it must,” he agreed. “I must go back then this very afternoon and try to see her and find out all about the trouble.”
“Shall I come too?” asked Mrs Coo.
“Certainly, if you like,” said Mr Coo.
In his heart, he was very pleased to have her company, but he was not very fond of allowing that he was not quite able to manage everything by himself.
“Certainly, if you like,” he repeated, “but just as you choose.”
“Then I think I will come,” she said. “For one thing, Mary will be pleased to see both of us together, I feel sure, and perhaps it may be easier to catch her eyes if we are both there. We can fly about a little just in front of her window as we used to do, and call out to each other. But I hope she will not be crying – at least not such very large tears. It would be almost too much for my feelings,” and she gave a deep sigh – a real sigh, though it sounded like a very soft and melancholy “coo.”
So, rather late that afternoon, the two wood-pigeons set off. It was a pretty long fly to the square where Mary lived, but they thought it better not to go earlier, for as it was now autumn and the days were beginning to get shorter, they knew that the children went out for their second walk soon after their dinner, so as to come in before it got chilly.
And very often just about the time they planned to reach the Square gardens, they had seen Mary at her own window, where she used to stand looking out, after taking off her hat and jacket, and while waiting to be called to tea.
Mary loved the window of her room. It looked out to the back of the house, for the gardens I am speaking of were not those in the middle of the square in front, but much prettier ones, stretching along between one side of Mary’s Square, and one side of another Square, whose houses also looked out on them from the back. Mary knew every tree and bush that grew near her house. She used to watch them all the year round, and could tell exactly about what time the leaves began to fade and drop off, and about when the pretty new spring ones first showed, growing a little greener and brighter every day till the trees had all their summer clothes on again. She got to know when the spring was in a lazy mood, and when the autumn was in too great a hurry to come, so that her uncle used sometimes to call her his little “weather prophet.” And if she had been clever at drawing, which I am afraid she was not particularly, she could have sketched the shapes and branches of her favourite trees from memory; so well did she know how they looked when quite bare, and how they looked when in full dress, and how the steady old evergreen ones, who never vary much, hold themselves.
Her ‘favouritest’ tree was one that kept its leaves longer, and strange to say, got its new ones earlier, than any of the others. I cannot tell you what kind of tree it was. I am not sure if Mary herself knew its name. She called it in her own mind the “fairy tree,” but she did not tell any one this, as she would have been afraid of being laughed at.
But her great reason for liking this tree best of any, you can perhaps already guess.
It was – or had been – the home of the dear wood-pigeons – the Cooies!
Ah – the “had been” makes a great difference. It was their home no longer.
Was that then what Mary was crying about the day Mr Coo saw her and felt so distressed about her?
No, not exactly that.
She had not quite understood Mr Coo’s long speech, in which he told her they were going to flit for good. She had only thought he was singing a “cooie” song to her extra sweetly, because they were going away for a day or two, as she had known them do before – for a little change, she supposed, now that the young Cooies were all hatched and fledged and able to look after themselves – “grown-up and out in the world.” Next year no doubt there would be eggs in the nest again to hatch and take care of – eggs and then fledglings – a weary business it must be, Mary thought, though happily Mrs Coo did not seem to think so, nor Mr Coo either, as he sat on a branch talking to her while she stayed so patiently and contentedly in the nest, and their soft voices sounded sweetly through the spring air, in at Mary’s window, where she never forgot to stand morning and evening to nod and smile to her little friends, and even to talk sometimes when Mr Coo hopped up to a still nearer bough.
No, it was not exactly about the Cooies having gone that Mary was crying so piteously that day. She still thought they would come back again before long, though certainly they had never been away for so many days together as this time, which made her begin to feel rather less sure of their returning, and when she came in from her walk that afternoon and stood at the window looking out, a sad fear stole over her that perhaps they would never come back again at all.
Suddenly a faint sound made her start. She had just begun saying to herself again the same words which Mr Coo had overheard, and which had so hurt his feelings as well as Mrs Coo’s.
“It’s too bad of the Cooies, too bad. I really don’t believe – ” when the little sound reached her ears, and looking up quickly, she saw that the window was slightly open at the top, and again she heard a soft, very soft “coo.”
It only took her a moment to push up the lower sash as high as it would go. Luckily there were bars across, so she could not lean far out; only her forehead and eyes and the top of her curly head got through, but even this gave her a clearer view of the fairy tree and the boughs, lower down than her window, from which Mr Coo had so often “talked” to her, while keeping at the same time his eye on Mrs Coo patiently seated on the nest farther in among the branches, and ready to do any little errand that might be wanted.
The nest, alas, was no longer there; only bits of it, at leasts were left Mary knew so exactly where it had been that she could distinguish the fragments, but no one looking for it for the first time could have seen anything at all. But – something better than the nest met Mary’s delighted eyes. Two little well-known figures were there – on the very end of one of the boughs, so as the better to catch her eye, and now there was no doubt in her mind as to the sound she had heard – her own dear wood-pigeons were back again, and looking to see her at the window!
She was so pleased that she almost screamed!
“Oh, Cooies, Cooies,” she cried, “you’ve come back. But why did you go away for so long? You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been. I wish you’d come up here on to the window-sill and let me tell you all about it.”
There came another “coo,” rather louder and clearer than usual, and then a flutter and movement, a spreading of little wings, and —
“I do believe,” said Mary to herself, “I do believe they’ve heard me and understood what I say.”
She spoke more than half in fun; she did not really think it could be true; all the same a sort of tremble of wonder and delight went through her, as she saw her little friends slowly rising upwards and heard the soft swish of their wings as they flew towards – yes actually towards her!
Was she dreaming?
She rubbed her eyes, as people always do when they are not quite sure if they are awake, or as they think they do when they are really asleep, but the rubbing made no difference. She was not dreaming. She was standing at her own window, it was still broad daylight, and everything was quite natural and real, and the same as usual except that the pair of wood-pigeons were flying towards her and in another moment had perched on her window-sill!
“They are fairies,” Mary decided, “that is it.”
“But not unkind, tricky fairies, I hope,” said a gentle soft voice, and a queer little shiver went through Mary. Fairies or not, a fairy gift had come to her. She could understand what the Cooies said!
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she exclaimed, half frightened and half wild with delight. “You must be fairies, for I can talk to you and know what you say.”
There was a sound like a murmur of laughter, and then the little voice again. It was Mrs Coo’s this time, but Mary had not yet learnt to distinguish between the two, though she soon came to do so.
“No, dear,” it said, “not more fairies than all we wood-creatures are, if only you human beings would take the trouble to get to know us. But some do – some few – and you are one of those it has come to easily, to understand us. We have always understood you. And now you must tell us all about what has been the matter.”
“And why you were crying so,” put in Mr Coo, who did not at all intend to be left out, especially as it was he who had made the discovery of Mary’s woe. “Such big tears too,” added Mrs Coo.
“It wasn’t only because we had gone away, was it?” asked Mr Coo.
“No,” replied Mary, finding herself, rather to her surprise, already getting used to the wonderful power that had come to her, “no, it wasn’t only that, because, you see, I thought you would soon come back again, as you have sometimes flown off for a day or two, you know. No, it wasn’t only that. It was that he wouldn’t believe me, and I care for him far the most of all my cousins. I mean Michael.”
“Michael,” repeated Mr Coo, “is he the fat little red-haired boy in sailor suits? His hair is something the colour of yours, Mary.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” said Mary, rather huffily. “That Michael! Of course not. That’s Fritz – stupid little thing. Michael isn’t fat. He’s tall and has proper dark hair, and he’s very, very brave. Fancy taking Fritz for Michael!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr Coo, but though his tone was very polite it was rather stiff. “How were we to know, seeing we are not nasty tricky fairies, about your relations, unless you explain them?” Mary felt herself growing red.
“I didn’t say nasty tricky fairies,” she replied very meekly. “I think I said ‘unkind,’ but I didn’t mean you to hear, and it was only just when I was vexed. But I’m sure now that you are very kind, and I am so glad you have come back again that I wouldn’t for anything be rude.”
“All right,” said Mr Coo, “I am sure you did not intend to hurt our feelings. We couldn’t care for you if you were that sort of little girl. But please be so good as to tell us about Michael, for time is getting on.”
“Yes,” Mary agreed, “they will soon be calling me to tea. Well – it was this way. You know that I’ve known you – that we’ve known each other, though not so well as now.”
“No, till now it has just been a polite acquaintance, so to say. Good-morning and good-evening, and so on – on your part at least, Mary,” interrupted Mr Coo. But Mrs Coo gave him a tiny poke with one of her feet – and Mary went on —
“Now that we can talk to each other it seems quite different, of course. All the same I have watched you ever since I came to live in this house – but somehow I’ve never spoken about you to any one. I didn’t want all the children to come bothering to my window, you see, and the nurseries all look to the front; I wanted to keep you to myself. But when Michael came home – he’s a sailor already, that’s why he’s so very brave – I thought I’d tell him about you – I wanted to tell somebody, you see, and – ”
A bell sounded – a voice at the door —
“Miss Mary, my dear.”
Chapter Two.
“A Few Crumbs and a Little Fresh Water.”
“Oh bother,” said Mary, “it’s tea – and nurse come to fetch me. What shall we do?” – “Yes, yes, nurse,” in a louder voice, “I’m coming in one moment,” and this seemed to satisfy nurse, for her steps sounded going downstairs again. “She needn’t open the door without tapping,” the little girl went on, speaking half to herself and half to her visitors on the window-sill, “I’m not one of the nursery children now. But oh, Cooies, what shall we do? It would take me ever so long to explain about Michael and to plan something to put it all right.”
“Must you go downstairs at once?” asked Mr Coo. “If you told it to us very quickly.”
But Mary shook her head.
“No – I must go. If I don’t, she’ll be coming up again, or sending for me, and I don’t want any one to hear us talking. They would laugh at me so, and say it was all nonsense. They are always calling me so fanciful.”
“I see,” said Mr Coo, thoughtfully.
But Mrs Coo did more than think.
“Of course,” she said, “there’s only one thing to be done. We must come back again to-morrow.”
She spoke just a tiny bit sharply.
“We are very busy,” said Mr Coo, “getting settled, you see, and choosing where our new nest is to be, and returning our neighbours’ calls, and so on.”
“All that can stand over,” said Mrs Coo. “Just say, my dear, what time to-morrow will be best.”
“I think” said Mary, “the best time will be when we come in from our walk in the morning. The little ones go to bed then for an hour, and I’ve had my lessons, and nurse generally tells me to take a book and sit still, and if it isn’t cold she lets me come up to my room, and she stays in the night nursery to keep Fritz and Twitter and baby from jumping out of their cots or teasing each other. Yes, please come about twelve o’clock, and would you like anything to eat?”
“You are very kind,” said Mr and Mrs Coo together. “A few crumbs and a little fresh water, perhaps,” and then off they flew.
Mary gazed after them for a moment or two, till their pearly grey wings were almost out of sight. She felt very happy – it was lovely to have seen them again; still more lovely to find that the wonderful, rare gift of being able to understand and talk to them had come to her.
“I won’t tell any one about it,” she decided, as she ran downstairs. “They would only laugh and call me fanciful that horrid way. Perhaps Fritz and Twitter wouldn’t; they’d just think it was a sort of fairy story I was making up for them – and it is a sort of fairy story, only it’s true! But they’re too little, they’d repeat it all to nurse, and of course it would be very wrong to tell them anything they weren’t to tell nurse. Michael wouldn’t have laughed at me; at least he wouldn’t have before, but now that he thinks I tell what isn’t true, he’d do worse than laugh at me. He’d look shocked again – oh dear!”
And Mary’s face, which had been so bright a minute or two ago, grew sad and grave, but just as she opened the nursery door another thought struck her.
The Cooies were coming again to-morrow, and she would tell them all about it, and they would plan something to make it all right; she felt sure they would.
The three little ones were already seated at the tea-table, and nurse was filling their cups and helping them to bread-and-butter.
“Maly, Maly,” said Fritz, “sit by me.”
“No, no, ’aside me,” said Twitter, a funny little girl with short, dark hair and bright dark eyes.
“Thide Baba,” added “baby,” another little fat, fair boy like Fritz.
It was rather nice to be welcomed like this, and Mary’s spirits, always very ready to go up or down, rose again.
“I can’t sit ‘’aside’ you all three,” she said, drawing in her chair, “so as Baba-boy has to be next nurse, I’ll sit between Fritz and Twitter.”
“And ’mile at Baba ac’oss the table,” said the baby.
“Yes, darling, of course I will,” said Mary, kindly.
After all, it was easy to forgive Fritz and him for being so fat, when you found how good-natured they were, though Mary did not think it pretty! Twitter, whose real name was Charlotte, was good-natured, too, in her own way, but she had a quick temper, and though she was such a little girl, she was very fond, dreadfully fond, of arguing.
“Once start Miss Twitter,” nurse used to say, “and you never know when she’ll stop,” and it was much the same with her if she began to cry. It would go on and on till everybody’s patience was worn out, and worst of all when you thought it had really come to an end, some tiny word or look even would begin it all again.
Still, on the whole, Mary cared the most for Twitter of her three little cousins. She was certainly the cleverest, and the most ready to understand what had come to be called “Miss Mary’s fancifulness.”
Perhaps, as I have spoken of the children as her cousins, I had better explain a little about the family in the Square. Mary herself had no brothers or sisters, and no father or mother; “no nobody,” she once said of herself very pitifully when she was very little, and before she came to live with her kind relations, who at that time were not in England. But she had always been very well taken care of by a lady who long ago had been Mary’s own mother’s governess, and now she had several “somebodies,” her uncle and aunt and the three little ones, and best of all, perhaps, Michael, the big brother of sixteen, who had been her first great friend in her new home. He was then a boy of twelve and Mary was eight, and boys of twelve sometimes look down on little girls who are four or five years younger than they are. Not so with Michael, he was so good and kind. He tried to make the shy little cousin, with her curly red hair and soft brown eyes, feel “at home” and happy, by every means in his power, and Mary had never forgotten this, and often said to herself that she never, never would (and I don’t think she ever will).
Nurse looked at Mary rather curiously as she handed her her tea-cup.
“Was there any one in the room with you, Miss Mary, my dear, when I went upstairs to fetch you?”
“No,” said Mary, but her own tone was perhaps not quite as usual, for she was thinking to herself if the “no” was quite truthful. Yes it was, she decided, the Cooies were not in the room, and besides, nurse meant any person– wood-pigeons were not people. So “No,” she repeated, more positively, “why do you ask, nurse?”
“Oh,” said nurse, “I may have been mistaken, but I thought I heard you speaking as I opened the door.”
“I daresay I was,” said Mary.
Nurse said something indistinct – a sort of “humph.”
“It is not a very good habit to get into – that speaking to yourself,” she said. “It makes one seem silly-like.”
“Perhaps I am silly,” answered Mary, half mischievously. “You know, nurse, you are always calling me full of fancies.”
“They’s very nice fancies,” said Twitter, “Maly tells we lubly faily stolies, dudn’t her, Flitz?”
Fritz’s mouth was full, and the nursery rules for good behaviour at meals were strict, so he only nodded.
“Fairy tales are all very well in their proper place,” said nurse.
“What is their proper place?” asked Mary, and I am afraid she spoke rather pertly.
“Pretty picture-books and such like,” nurse replied, for she was very matter-of-fact. “Just like nursery rhymes and songs – ‘Little Boy Blue’ and ‘Bo-peep,’ and all the rest of them. But it would be very silly for young ladies and gentlemen to go on with babyish things like that, when they can read quite well and learn beautiful verses like ‘Old Father William,’ and ‘The Battle of – ’ no, I don’t rightly remember the name, but it’s a fine piece of poetry if ever there was one, and I recollect my brother Tom saying it at a prize-giving at our school at home, and the squire’s lady had her handkerchief at her eyes, and the squire himself shook him by the hand, and Tom and me was that proud.”
This was interesting, and Mary could not resist asking a number of questions about Tom, as to how old he had been then, and how old he was now, to which nurse was only too pleased to reply, adding that he was now a schoolmaster himself, with little Toms of his own, whom she went to see when she had her holiday once a year.
So the conversation turned into pleasant directions, and nothing more was said about Mary’s fancifulness.
When she woke the next morning Mary’s first glance, as usual, was towards the window. She never had the blinds drawn down at night, for she loved the morning light, and it did not wake her: she slept too soundly for that. And as there were, as I have told you, gardens – large gardens – at the back of the house, where her room was, there was no one to overlook her window.
Ah – it was a dull morning – a dull, grey, early autumn morning, and “I hope it’s not going to rain,” thought Mary. “I’m so afraid the Cooies wouldn’t come if it did, though perhaps they’re not afraid of getting wet.”
There came into her mind, however, the old rhyme about “The morning grey,” and as she dressed she kept peeping up at the sky, and was pleased to see that it was growing rather lighter and clearer. She was very glad of this, for even if it had only rained for an hour or two, it would have stopped the morning walk, and very likely the morning rest for the little ones, and she would not have had the hour to herself “to be quiet in,” as usual, but all, happily, turned out rightly, and some minutes before twelve o’clock Mary was standing by her window looking out for her little visitors.
She had good eyes, and she saw them quite a long way off. There were other birds flying about, of course, but none coming two together, straight on, without making circles or dips or going the least out of their path – two tiny specks they seemed at first, against the blue-grey sky, flying onwards in a most business-like way. For the old saying had proved true again; though not a brilliant day, it was quite fine and mild, and the sky was a soft, friendly colour, with no storm signs about it.
The two specks grew larger and larger, as they came nearer, and after alighting for a moment on the familiar bough of their own old tree home, apparently to smooth their feathers and take a tiny rest, the wood-pigeons fluttered across to the window-sill.
“Oh, I am so pleased to see you,” said Mary. “I was so afraid it was going to rain. Aren’t you tired and out of breath with flying so far?”
“No, thank you – flying never makes us out of breath. It is not like your running – not nearly such hard work. Our wings get a little stiff sometimes, if there is much wind and we have to battle against it. But to-day is very still, and even if it had rained we should have come just the same,” said Mr Coo.
“Thank you,” said Mary. “I have crumbled some nice biscuit all ready for you, you see, and there is some water in the lid of my soap-box; it is quite fresh.”
“Many thanks,” said Mrs Coo, “and all good wishes to you, my dear,” and as she spoke she bent her pretty head to take a drink. Mr Coo followed her example, and then they picked up some crumbs in quite an elegant manner – not at all in the hurried greedy way that some birds do.
“While you are having your luncheon,” said Mary, “I will tell you why I was so anxious to see you. You know my cousin – my big cousin – Michael – no, perhaps you don’t, but it doesn’t matter. He is my favourite cousin, and there isn’t anything I don’t tell him. He always understands and never laughs at me – at least, he has been like that till just now. He is a sailor, and he is very seldom at home. He’s not been to see us since we came to live here till the other day. I had lots of things to tell him, of course, and one of the things I told him was about you, dear Cooies, and how nice it was to have you living in the tree close to my window. I thought he looked a little funny when I told it him, and now I’m quite sure they’d been talking to him that horrid way about me being fanciful,” Mary stopped a moment to take breath, and Mr Coo, who had picked up as many crumbs as he wanted, cocked his head on one side and looked up at her very gravely.
“Whom do you mean by ‘they’?” he inquired.
“Oh,” said Mary, “everybody. I suppose I mean all the big people. Auntie and uncle, for I daresay auntie talks about it to him, and Miss Bray – no, I’m not sure about Miss Bray. She’s my daily governess, but I never see her except at lessons, and she never talks about anything except lessons – she’s rather dull,” and Mary sighed. “And most of all,” she went on again, “nurse. She is the worst of all, though she’s quite kind. She doesn’t understand the tiniest bit in the world about fairy stories, you see. She thinks they’re just like nursery rhymes. Fancy, putting fairy stories and nursery rhymes together!”
“Nursery rhymes are very nice sometimes,” said Mrs Coo. “The verse in ‘Cock-robin’ about our cousins, the Doves, is lovely, only it is too much for my feelings,” and she really looked as if she were going to cry.
“But they are only for babies,” said Mary, “and I know that some big people are just as fond of fairy stories as I am. Michael told me so, and he gave me a book of them, his very own self, on my last birthday. Well – I must go on telling you what happened. The very next morning after I had told him my secret about you, my dear Cooies, I made him come up here to see your nest, though I told him you yourselves hadn’t been here for a day or two. And, wasn’t it unlucky? – there had been lots of wind the night before, and the nest was nearly all blown away; a branch had fallen on it, I think. It was already just like now – really nothing to be seen, except by any one who had known of it before. And you were not there either. No sign of you. So Michael looked at me very gravely and he said, ‘My dear Mary, you really mustn’t let your fancy run away with you. I can’t believe there have ever been wood-pigeons in that tree. You may have seen a pair of common pigeons from the stables over there, flying about, but it is most unlikely that there ever was a nest there; there certainly isn’t now.’ And he looked at me as if he really thought I’d been making up a story.”
