'Yes, no,' he laughed, using her method unconsciously.
'I can't lace my boot with one hand, but the other isn't unselfish when it comes to help. My head is no farther from me than my boot, is it?' And she sang softly her bird-song of movement and delight, until he felt the quality of her volatile, aerial mind flash down into his own and lighten it amazingly.
'My precious little daughter,' he cried, 'you are a bird, and you shall teach me all your flying secrets. But, tell me,' he whispered, 'how in the world did you find out all this?'
'Oh, I can't tell that,' she replied almost impatiently, 'for once I begin to think it all goes, and I feel like an animal in a hole. But I'll tell you soon—when the right moment comes—in the fields. I just go about and it all shoots into me.'
It was the true bird-quality, always singing, always on the alert, swift to notice and be glad.
'Yet I said it without thinking,' she went on, 'and the meaning came in afterwards at the end—all of its own accord. And that's really the way to live together. At least, it's coming——'
'The next stage, the next move!'
'Flight!' she cried, half singing it.
'You live and talk,' he laughed, 'like a German sentence that carries all in the head and suddenly puts the verb down at the end.'
'Yes, yes,' he realised after she had gone to bed, while he sat there, pondering her fluid statements, 'there is this new thing coming into life, and it is in some sense indeed a bird-thing. It's a new outlook!'