"Why have you taken to playing with sticks?" she asked, laughing. "I never saw such a funny heap. Is it a game?" But Wildoo only looked at her sourly, and said, "Be quiet, woman!" after the manner of husbands: and since she was more sensible than most wives, she was quiet.
It was after his heap of sticks was ready that Wildoo went to look for the Wokala. They had been far too uncomfortable lately to continue to be rude to him, and, in fact, were keeping out of the way of every one; so that he had some difficulty in finding them, and might have given it up but for Corridella, the Eagle-hawk, who remembered having seen them near a sheltered gully between two hills.
"They are cold," said Corridella, laughing, "oh, so cold, and so sorry for themselves. There is no impudence left in them."
"Cold indeed must be the night that chills the impudence of the Wokala," said Wildoo.
"It is going to be a very cold night," said Corridella. "Already there is a sharp nip of frost in the air. I think that some of the Wokala will be dead before morning, for none of them have their new feather cloaks nearly ready." He chuckled. "Well, no one in the Bush will mourn for them. Perhaps they will realize now that it does not pay to make enemies of every one."
"The Wokala will never learn a lesson," answered Wildoo. "They are always satisfied with themselves: and even though some may die, the others will forget all about it, once they have their shining white cloaks and can flock into the tree-tops again. But possibly they may not be so lucky—who can tell?" He also chuckled, looking as wise as an owl. But when Corridella asked him what he meant, he pretended to go to sleep: and Corridella, who knew better than to pester an Eagle with too many questions, said good evening and sailed homeward across the tree-tops.
Left to himself, Wildoo waited until no bird was in sight, and then flapped heavily away from his rocky shelf, and dived downward to the gully. It did not take him long to find the Wokala. They did not gleam with the whiteness of snow, for they were moulting and very shabby, and a few were dressed mainly in pin-feathers; but their voices were just as harsh as ever, and guided Wildoo to where they were huddling among some she-oak trees. Already a cold wind was whistling down between the hills, sighing and moaning in the she-oak branches. There is no tree in all Australia so mournful as the she-oak on a cold night, when each long needle seems to sing a separate little song of woe. Already the miserable Wokala were sorry that they had chosen to roost there.
Suddenly, great wings darkened the evening sky above them, and, looking up, they saw Wildoo. He perched on a limb of a dead gum-tree far overhead, and looked down at them, laughing. There seemed, to the shivering Wokala, something very terrible in the sound of his laughter.
"Kwah!" they whispered. "Wildoo has found us. Now he will be revenged." They knew they could not fly swiftly enough to escape him, and they began to creep downwards, hoping to hide among the bracken fern that clothed the gully. But Wildoo called to them, and, to their astonishment, his voice sounded friendly.
"Oh, Wokala!" he cried. "Are you very cold?"