"How can sound show itself in a face, grandmamma?" asked Jack.
"Supposing you heard a loud, sudden scream, you would be startled and frightened by the cry; if you heard a tremendous clap of thunder, you might look a little frightened too, but you would also look solemn and still as you heard the grand sound; but you would have quite another look if you were lying on your back under a shady tree some calm summer evening, listening to the low song of the birds, and to the many sounds that are almost silence."
"Cuckoo! cuckoo!"
"O grandmamma, there's the cuckoo!" cried all the children at once.
"Yes; there are a great many cuckoos about here. They say it is only the male bird that calls 'Cuckoo,' that the female simply makes a chattering sound."
"Did you ever see a cuckoo, grandma?"
"No, never a live bird, only one stuffed. I will tell you a story of how I heard one once. It was about five-and-twenty years ago. I wanted some primroses for a nosegay. I used to pick the long feathery moss that grows in these woods and put the primroses among it. I ran across the road outside of our gates—for I could run in those days—and soon filled my basket with as many primroses as I wanted. As I was standing under a large tree, I heard all at once, exactly over my head, a loud, gruff cry of 'Cuckoo.' I was so startled, the cry was so near, that I thought it must be a rude man, and I dropped all my primroses and ran back to the gates.
"Then I thought, 'How foolish of me to be frightened; it is the 18th of April, the right time for the cuckoo to come back to England from the warm country where he has been all the winter,—of course it is a real cuckoo.' So I went back and picked up my primroses, but I heard no more of that cuckoo.
"I told my children when I came indoors about my adventure; and how they did laugh at their mother for being frightened at a bird.
"I shall always think, though, that that particular cuckoo must have caught a bad cold on his long journey to England, or soon after his arrival, for his voice sounded as if he had a sore throat."