He was finding his way to a bigger and better means of self-expression than he had yet dreamed of; while Nixie, the dea ex machina, for ever flitted on ahead and showed the way.
It remained a fairy tale of the most delightful kind. That, at least, he realised clearly.
CHAPTER XXII
Among the branches of the ilex tree, whose thick foliage rose like a giant swarm of bees at the end of the lawn, there were three dark spots visible that might have puzzled the most expert botanist until he came close enough to examine them in detail. The fact that the birds avoided the tree at this particular hour of the evening, when they might otherwise have loved to perch and sing, hidden among the dense shiny leaves, would very likely have furnished a clue, and have suggested to him—if he were a really intelligent man of science—that these dark spots were of human origin.
In the order in which they rose from the ground towards the top they were, in fact, Toby, Joan Nicholson, Paul, Nixie and, highest of all, Jonah. Paul felt safer in the big fork, Joan in the wide seat with the back. In the upper branches Jonah perched, singing and chattering. Toby hummed to herself happily nearer the ground, and Nixie, her legs swinging dizzily over a serpentine branch immediately above Paul’s head, was really the safest of the lot, though she looked ready to drop at any moment.
They were all at rest, these wingless human birds, in the tree where Paul had long ago made seats and staircases and bell-ropes.
‘I wish the wind would come,’ said Nixie. ‘It would make us all swing about.’
‘And Jonah would lose his balance and bring the lot of us down like ripe fruit,’ said Paul.
‘On the top of Toby at the bottom,’ added Joan.
‘But my house is well built,’ Paul objected, ‘or it would never have held such a lot of visitors as it did yesterday.’