"There's your share," she said and she gave me a regular bear hug. Then she sprang on my back again. "Home, Prince Fetlar, home! Mother will be saying, 'Cassowary is as bad as the robins. She won't go to bed—she won't go to bed.'"
I hated to think of this nice girl being scolded, so I took her back as quickly as we had come, she clinging to my back like a crab and making as much noise as a loon.
She did wake the loons up, and afterward I learned that they knew her voice and loved her, for she was good to them and protected them.
They were in full cry that night and answered every line of the victory song she howled as she clung to me with her bony young knees.
"I ran my pony in a race,
He leaped and bounded full of grace,
The loons they called, they called to me,
I answered them quite daft with glee."
"Not good poetry, Prince," she gasped, "but Dad says—he says when your heart is bursting, break into verse—any old verse. It's yours. Other fellow doesn't know your thoughts. I'll sing again—about you and Dallas. Echo! loonies," and she began to shout,
"With hoofs of gold and temper sweet,