“They are rather strange-looking birds.”
It struck him suddenly that Miss Latimer herself looked like a stone-curlew.
“They’ve the same cry, nearly, as the ordinary curlew, haven’t they?” he continued. “You get plenty of those up here, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes. You can hear them any day. It is rather the same sort of cry.”
Antonia knew little about the country and was not observant of nature; but now, leaning her head on her hand and looking out of the window, she remarked, unexpectedly: “I hate their cry; if it is the cry of curlews I mean. Aren’t they the birds that have that high, bleak, drifting wail?”
“Oh, I rather like it,” said Captain Saltonhall. “Yes, that’s the bird. It’s the sort of melancholy ordained by Providence to go with tea-time and a wood-fire, as eggs are ordained to go with bacon.”
“No,” said Antonia. “It’s ordained to go with nothing. It makes me think of something that has been forgotten; something that has given up even the hope of being remembered, yet that laments.”
“But the curlew isn’t forgotten. It is probably calling to its mate.”
“Probably. I am not talking of the natural history of the bird. Its cry sounds like the cry of a creature that has been forgotten by its mate.”
“What do you think it sounds like?” he asked Miss Latimer. He distrusted the direction taken by Antonia’s thoughts.