A lark dropped from the tree and crouched in a tussock of grass. Then it jumped off the ground and began mounting in a perpendicular line, rising very slowly and singing as it went.
When it had got to the top of its flight it hovered there, and slowly descended, still singing. About ten feet from the ground it stopped singing, and dropped plump into the tussock from which it had risen.
‘Candidate, please,’ said Canon Rook.
‘Must I sing too?’ asked David.
‘Of course that’s part of it,’ said the lark, still rather breathless. ‘Any one could do it without singing.’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s not a singing competition,’ said Canon Rook. ‘Can you sing?’ he asked David.
David remembered how Noah had offered him a post to sing in opera in the ark, evenings and matinées, and, though no doubt birds were a more musical audience, he felt that it would be untrue, after that, to say he couldn’t sing.
‘Yes, I can sing,’ he said. ‘At least Noah thought so.’
‘I think he’d better have a try first,’ said the nightingale. ‘It would be awful if he sang very badly all the time, and we had to bear it till he got down again, as the committee mayn’t interrupt a candidate in the middle of a test.’
‘Sing a few bars, David,’ said Canon Rook.