“The woodpigeon greets Tommy Smith with a coo,
Which he modifies slightly to ‘How do you do?’”
WHAT could be more beautiful than the woods that fine spring morning on which Tommy Smith walked through them? The sky was blue, and the air was soft, and the birds were singing everywhere. There was a concert, surely; the trees had given it. That is what came into Tommy Smith’s head, and perhaps he was right. It is in spring that the season begins. Then ladies and gentlemen dress themselves finely, and come and stand together in a crowd, and there is talking, and laughing, and singing. And here in the woods the trees had all put on fine new dresses of bright green, for their season of spring had come, and green was the fashionable colour. They stood together too,—ever so many of them,—and bent their heads towards each other, and seemed to be whispering. Then their leaves rustled, which was a much pleasanter sound than ladies’ and gentlemen’s talking and laughing (though perhaps it did not mean quite as much); and, oh! what beautiful sounds came from their midst. Tommy Smith knew that it was not the trees who were singing, but the birds in them. “But it seems as if it were the trees,” he thought, “because I can’t see the birds. But perhaps the trees ask the birds to sing for them, as we ask people to play and sing for us. That is how they give their concerts and parties, perhaps. The large ones are like rich people who can afford to hire a whole band, but the little ones and the bushes are the people who are not so well off, and they can only have a bird or two.” Tommy Smith thought all this, because he was a little boy, and liked to pretend things, but a long time afterwards, when he was much wiser, he used to remember those walks of his in the woods, and sometimes he would say to himself, “Yes, those were the best seasons; those were the concerts and parties most worth going to.”
A fallen tree lay across Tommy Smith’s path. It had once been a tall, stately oak, now it made a nice mossy seat for a little boy. We are not all of us so useful when we grow old. “I will sit down on it,” thought Tommy Smith, “and listen to the birds singing, and pretend they are people, and not birds at all.” So Tommy Smith sat down and listened. A thrush was sitting on the very tip-top of a high fir tree, and soon he began to fill the whole air with his beautiful, clear, joyous notes. “I like that as well as the piano,” said Tommy Smith, “and I don’t think I know any lady who could sing such a beautiful song.” Then the robin began. “That is lower and sweeter,” he thought. “People make a great deal more noise when they sing, but it doesn’t seem to mean so much, or, if it does, I don’t like the meaning so well. Then a jay screamed, and some starlings began to chatter. “Oh, there!” cried Tommy Smith, clapping his hands. “That is much more like people. Ladies talk and sing just like that. But not like that,” he continued; for now another sound began to mingle with the rest, such a pretty, such a very pretty sound, so soft, and so tender and sleepy, “like a lullaby,” Tommy Smith thought. And, as he listened to it, all the woods seemed to grow hushed and still, as if they were listening too. “Oh,” said Tommy Smith, “it is no use pretending any more. That couldn’t be people. No men, and no women either, have such a pretty voice as that.”
“Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo,” said the voice. It had been some way off before, but now it sounded much nearer. “Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo.” Why, surely it was in that tree, only just a little way from where Tommy Smith was sitting. “I will go and look,” he thought. “I know who it is. It is the woodpigeon. Perhaps he will stay and talk to me.”
So he got up, and walked towards the tree. But—was it not strange?—as he came to it the voice seemed to change just a little. Only just a little; it had still the same pretty, soft sound, and the end part was just the same, but, instead of “Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo,” which it had been saying before, now it was saying—yes, and quite distinctly too—“How do you do-oo-oo-oo? How do you do-oo-oo-oo?” Yes, there could be no doubt of it, and as Tommy Smith came quite up to the tree, there was the woodpigeon sitting on one of the lowest branches, bowing to him quite politely, and asking him how he was.
“Oh, I am quite well, Mr. Woodpigeon,” answered Tommy Smith. “I hope you are.”
“Oh, I am quite well too-oo-oo-oo,” cooed the woodpigeon, bobbing his head up and down all the while.
“Why do you move your head up and down like that whilst you speak?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, because it is the proper thing to do-oo-oo-oo,” replied the woodpigeon.