‘The tune’s still lost,’ murmured the deep voice from the shadows of the big fork. ‘I must go into the Crack and find it. That’s where I found the words, at least——’ The sound of his voice melted away.
‘Of course,’ Joan was heard to say faintly, ‘all lost things are in there, aren’t they?’
And then something queer happened that was never explained. Perhaps they all slipped through the Crack together; or perhaps Nixie’s funny little singing voice floated down to them through such a filter of listening leaves that both words and tune were changed on the way into something sweeter than they actually were in themselves.
Who told the Silver Birch tree
The stories that we made?
And how can she remember
The very games we played?
Who told her heart of silver
That, almost from her birth,
The roots of that old Pine tree