Somehow they had not talked very much to each other of their visit to the old caretaker; but now and then they had amused themselves by planning what they would have wished for had they come across a dwarf with magic power.
Rafe did not answer for a moment. He was looking up, high up among the branches.
“Hush,” he said, in a half whisper. “Do you hear that bird, Alix? I never heard a note like it before.”
“Two notes,” said Alix, in the same low voice. “It’s two birds talking to each other, I feel certain.”
“It does sound like it,” said Rafe. “Oh, I say, Alix, wouldn’t you like to understand what they’re saying?”
“Yes,” said his sister. “I do wish we could. There must be some sense in it. It sounds so real and— Look, Rafe,” she went on, “they’re coming nearer us;” and so they were. Still chirping, the birds flew downwards till they lighted on a branch not very far above the children’s heads.
Suddenly Alix caught hold of Rafe’s arm.
“Be quite, quite still,” she whispered. “I have an idea that if we listen very carefully we can make sense of what they’re saying.”
She almost held her breath, so eager was she; and Rafe, too, sat perfectly motionless. And Alix was not mistaken. After a while the birds’ chirps took shape to the children’s ears. Bit by bit the “tweet, tweet” varied and changed, like a voice heard in the distance, which, as it draws nearer, grows from a murmur into syllables and words.
One bird was answering the other; in fact, there was a lively discussion going on between them.