"I know everything that it is my business to know," returned the gnome impatiently, "and that is enough. Begone, now. O, the birds," he added with another knowing nod and wink, "Leave it to the birds. Out with you! The rain is coming."
"But we'd like to stay here until the shower passes," suggested Pierre.
"No indeed. I must get to my work and command my army. How do I know that you would not make off with a glowworm or a mole? Have you brought any references?"
The children were forced to admit that they had not, so the gnome hustled them up the stairs and they climbed until they came out into the daylight of the hollow tree.
A flash of lightning greeted them, and they laughed as they cuddled down into the powdered dead wood in the depths of the hollow and watched the silver rain which at once began to fall, and listened to the grand peals of thunder that seemed to shake the foundations of the earth.
"It's no wonder he could feel the thunder," said Pierre.
"Did you speak to me?" asked a laughing voice. It sighed even as it laughed, like a breeze passing through the tops of the trees.
The children looked all about.
"Pierre, you made a rhyme," exclaimed Iona. "'You were a poet and didn't know it' and we know by this time that fairies love poetry. Something lovely is near us. Do you suppose a dryad lives in this tree?"