Mercer laughed.
“There’s an old unbeliever for you. I’m not joking you; I never do that sort of thing. It is a bird really.”
“Show it to me then.”
“I can’t. He’s sitting somewhere on a big branch, long way up, and you can’t find them because they look so like the bark of the tree, and you don’t know where the sound comes from. They’re just like the corn-crakes.”
“I’ve read about corn-crakes,” I said.
“Well, there’s plenty here. You wait till night, and I’ll open our bedroom window, and you can hear them craking away down in the meadows. You never can tell whereabouts they are, though, and you very seldom see them. They’re light brown birds.”
We were walking on now, and twice over he stopped, smiling at me, so that I could listen to the night-jars, making their whirring noise in the wood.
“Now, was I cramming you?” he said.
“No, and I will not doubt you again. Why, what a lot you know about country things!”
“Not I. That’s nothing. You soon pick up all that. Ever hear a nightingale?”