"Best have them ready," she thought.
Then she stood motionless.
And suddenly, coming upwards to her, and yet sounding in the silent air as if all around her, came the fairy chimes—one, two, three, four, for the completed hour, and then the sweet musical deeper note, twelve times repeated.
Linde was all alert.
She stooped at once and tapped three times with the three tiny feathers.
And then what exactly happened she could not have told. She felt herself lifted a little way and made somehow or other to sit down on what seemed a soft cushion. It was really a thick, round sod of turf, and as soon as she was seated on it, it began to descend—down, down, making her at first feel rather giddy, though it moved slowly. She shut her eyes, and the giddiness left her. Then she opened them, but all seemed darkness for some seconds, till a faint light began to creep up, growing brighter as her strange journey continued, and at last steadying into a pleasant glow, not glaring or bewildering, but clear and bright, so as to show all surrounding objects distinctly.
Linde sprang to her feet in delight. She was in the sweetest place she had ever dreamed of. Sweet in every sense, for it was a small garden of the beautiful rose-bushes, like the one the robin had shown her. And the scent was the exquisite one so familiar to her.
She was standing at the entrance to a sort of bower, or niche, in the midst of the fragrant bushes, and glancing into it she saw that there was a little hillock in its centre, and on this hillock were perched what at first seemed to her hundreds of redbreasts. In reality, I think there were about fifty—all motionless, till from their midst flew out one, whom by some instinct Linde recognised as her old friend.
"Birds," he said, for, to the fairy-touched ears of the child, chirps were words, "birds! She has come. And the time has come. Friends, bid her welcome."
And a lovely welcome it was which poured from the many little throats.