“Cannot one?” said Tiretta, hastily interposing with a droll look. “Ah, but I do not feel so sure!”
There was a knot of frayed bullion hanging from his sword hilt, and, picking delicately, he unwound from it a single strand of gold wire a yard or so in length. This, after testing, he carried to a branch that overhung the walk, and, fitting it taut within a natural bow made by the wood, contrived a tonic resonant string, which, daintily touched, answered to his manipulation like that of a fairy guitar.
“Now,” he said, his head bent to the string and his fingers lightly caressing it? “shall we see if the little tree will sing to us?”
“Yes, yes!” cried the children breathlessly.
“You must be very quiet,” he said. “It will speak, if it speaks at all, so soft and shy that a sound would frighten it.”
They sat as dumb as mice—as dumb as the hot motionless air about them. And presently his fingers moved—the merest phantom of music; and in the low phantom of a voice he took up their tale:
“What music in the little tree?
The wind, the bird, the humming-bee.
They yield their secrets up, and sing
With tirra-lirra down my string.