“Won’t we need a basket or something?”
“No. I show you.”
The method, it seemed, was to string the fungus on a long thin peeled rod. They were big things, flabby and pale lavender, rather like unpleasantly raw liver, but Monsieur assured her they were delicious when cooked.
They had found the grove about two miles from the house up an old logging road now nearly overgrown with brush and deep damp moss. The pines rose huge and straight and the air was cool, but after an hour or more of scrabbling over dead logs and grubbing among fallen leaves for the mushrooms Cynthia was glad to sink wearily to a seat on a mossy stone.
“Ouff but I’m weary. Goodness, how you can walk!” she exclaimed to the pleased old man.
“I have been hard worker in my time.”
“There’s a funny noise about here,” Cynthia commented after a moment of silence. “Sounds rather like a cricket, yet not. ... I wonder. ...” She listened again and as the old man started to speak held up her hand for silence. There was no breeze. The pine boughs high overhead scarcely moved. There were certainly no crickets about, yet what was that noise?
Then from a thicket just a few yards away came a familiar call. “Cuck ... oo! Cuck ... ooooo!”
“Your clock!” Cynthia almost shouted, and jumped to her feet. Monsieur Marge was right behind her as she parted the brush, looked downward. She chuckled and held back the branch that he might see.
There, wrapped in an old shawl and fast asleep was Thomasina Yturbe. In her arms, its placid little face turned to the skies, ticked the imperturbable cuckoo clock.