In a moment they were on their feet and away over the springy turf, singing and laughing in the sunshine, picking flowers, jumping the little brooks that ran like crystal ribbons among the grass, Nixie and Jonah dancing by his side as though they had springs in their feet and wings on their shoulders. More and more the country spread before them like a great garden run wild, and Paul thought he had never seen such fields of flowers or smelt such perfumes in the wind.
‘What’s the matter now?’ he exclaimed, as Jonah stopped and began to stare hard at an acre of lilies of the valley by the way.
‘He’s calling some things of his own,’ Nixie answered. ‘Stare and think—and they’ll all come. But we needn’t bother about him. Come along!’ And he only had time to see the lilies open in an avenue to make way for a variety of furry, four-legged creatures, when the child pulled him by the hand and they were off again at full speed across the fields.
A sound of neighing made him turn round, and before he could move aside, a large grey horse with a flowing tail and a face full of gentle beneficence came trotting over the turf and stopped just behind him, nuzzling softly into his shoulder.
‘Nice, silly-faced old thing,’ said Nixie, running up to speak to it, while a brown collie trotted quietly at her heels. A little further off, peeping up through a tangled growth of pinks and meadow-sweet, he saw the faces of innumerable kittens, watching him with large and inquisitive eyes, their ears just topping the flowers like leaves of fur. Such a family of animals Paul thought he had never even dreamed of.
‘This is the heaven of the lost animals,’ Nixie cried from her seat on the back of the grey horse, having climbed up by means of a big stone. On her shoulder perched a small brown owl, blinking in the light like the instantaneous shutter of a photographic camera. It had fluffy feathers down to its ankles like trousers, and was very tame. ‘And they are always happy here and have plenty to eat and drink. They play with us far better here than outside, and are never frightened. Of course, too, they get no older.’
Paul climbed up behind her on the horse’s back.
‘Now we’re off!’ he cried; and with Jonah and a dozen animals at their heels, they raced off across the open country, holding on as best they could to mane and tail, laughing, shouting, singing, while the wind whistled in their ears and the hot sun poured down upon their bare heads.
Then, suddenly, the horse stopped with a jerk that sent them sprawling forward upon his neck. He turned his head round to look at them with a comical expression in his big, brown eyes. Paul slid off behind, and Nixie saved herself by springing sideways into a bed of forget-me-nots. The owl fluttered away, blinking its eyes more rapidly than ever in a kind of surprised fury, shaking out its fluffy trousers, and Jonah arrived panting with his dogs and rabbits and puppies.
‘Come,’ exclaimed Nixie breathlessly, ‘he’s had enough by now. No animal wants people too long. Let’s get something to eat.’