‘Next week,’ said Joan quietly, as though to herself, ‘the other lot will come. Your sister’s as good as gold about it all.’
Then, after a pause, Nixie’s voice dropped down to them again:
‘And had some of them really never seen a wood before?’ she asked. ‘Fancy that! When I grow up I shall have a big wood made specially for them—the “Wood for Lost Children” I shall call it. And you’ll see about the tents and cooking, won’t you, Uncle Paul? Or, perhaps,’ she added, ‘by that time I shall know how to make a real proper stew and porridge, and be able to tell them stories round the fire as you did. Don’t you think so?’
‘I think you know most of it already,’ he answered gently. ‘It seems to me somehow that you have always known all the important things like that.’
‘Oh, do you really? How splendid if I really did!’ There was a slight break in her voice—ever so slight. ‘I should so dreadfully like to help—if I could. It’s so slow getting old enough to do anything.’
Paul turned his head up to her. It was too dim to see her body lying along the bough, but he could just make out her eyes peering down between the dark of the leaves, a yellow mist where her hair was, and all the rest hidden. Very eerie, very suggestive it was, to hear this little voice amid the dusk of the branches, putting his own thoughts into words. Were those tears that glistened in the round pools of blue, or was it the reflection of sunset and the coming stars that filtered past her through the thinning tree-top? Again he thought of that silver birch standing under the protection of the shaggy pine.
‘Sing us something, Nixie,’ rose the voice of Joan from below.
‘What shall I sing?’
‘That thing about the two trees Uncle Paul made up.’
‘But he hasn’t given me the tune yet!’