“I would, with pleasure,” Eva said, “if I had any corn with me, for that is what jackdaws eat.”
The jackdaw tossed his head at this.
“Pooh! you are silly; can’t you see I’m a peacock? Just look at my fine feathers, and tell me what you suppose I want with corn? If you really are willing to give me something to eat, why, I’ll take one of those fine, fat fish swimming near the boat.”
“That I cannot let you do,” Eva said. “I know who you are, now: you are the bird who stole the peacock’s feathers; I saw a picture of you in a little book I once read.”
“Found out! Found out!” cawed the jackdaw; and, with that, off he flew; and he was in such a hurry to be gone that he dropped two of the long feathers which had been in his tail, and Eva picked them up and stuck them into the side of the boat.
Then one of the trout, after the jackdaw was gone, put his head up out of the water and said:
“It is a good thing for all of us that you said ‘no’ to the bird. For, if you had said he might take one of us, he would not have touched us, but would have pecked a hole in the boat, and she would have sunk to the bottom of the brook. We should have had to leave you, and then you never could have reached the Enchanted River.”
“Where is the Enchanted River?” Eva asked the trout.
He answered, “It runs through Shadow-Land.”
“And where are we?”