And off he bounded, with Bob at his heels.
The Admiral, whose feet were getting cold now, hopped out of the stream, stretched out his three-foot neck, and looked after them.
“They think they’re going to leave me behind, do they? Tok—tok—tok,”—which in craneish language means “No—no—no.”
So away he went next, with his head and his long neck about a yard in front of him, and his wings expanded. It would have puzzled any one to have told whether the Admiral was running or flying.
If Ransey Tansey climbed one tree he climbed a dozen. Ransey walked through the wood with upturned face, and whenever he saw a nest, whether it belonged to magpie, hawk, or hooded crow, skywards he went to have a look at it.
He liked to look at the eggs best, and sometimes he brought just one down in his mouth if four were left behind, because, he thought, one wouldn’t be missed. But even this was sinful; for although birds are not very good arithmeticians, every one of them can count as far as the number of its eggs—even a partridge or a wren can.
Sometimes the Admiral wanted to investigate the nests, but Ransey sternly forbade him. He might dance round the tree as much as he liked, but he must not fly up.
Bob used to bark at his master as he climbed up and up. Indeed, when perched on the very, very top of a tall larch-tree Ransey himself didn’t look much bigger than a rook.
Yet I think the ever-abiding sorrow with Bob was not that he had not a tail worth talking about, but that he could not climb a tree.
Different birds behaved in different ways when Ransey visited their nests. Thus: a linnet or a robin, flying from its sweet, cosy little home in a bush of orange-scented furze, would sit and sing at no great distance in a half-hysterical kind of way, as if it really didn’t know what it was about. A blackbird from a tall thorn-tree or baby spruce, would go scurrying off, and make the woods resound with her cries of “beet, beet, beet,” till other birds, crouching low on their nests, trembled with fear lest their turn might come next. A hooded crow would fly off some distance and perch on a tree, but say nothing: hooded crows are philosophers. A magpie went but a little distance away, and sat nodding and chickering in great distress. A hawk would course round and round in great circles in the air, uttering every now and then a most distressful scream.