So the little brooks danced along their way as happily as ever, enjoying the sunshine, and with no murmurs from the little fishes to sadden their pretty songs, no fears for themselves of their full bright life running short. Every living thing seemed bubbling over with content; the flowers and blossoms were as fresh in July as in May; never had the birds been quite so busy and merry; and as for the butterflies, there was no counting their number or variety. Some new kinds must have come this year from butterflyland, Ferdy said to Christine one afternoon when he was lying out on his new couch on the lawn. Christine laughed, and so did Miss Lilly, and asked him to tell them where that country was, and Ferdy looked very wise and said it lay on the edge of fairyland, the fairies looked after it, that much he did know, and some day perhaps he would find out more.
And then he went on to tell them, in his half-joking, half-serious way, that he really thought the swallows were considering whether it was worth while to go away over the sea again next autumn. He had heard them having such a talk early that morning, and as far as he could make out, that was what they were saying.
"The spring came so early this year, and the summer looks as if it were going to last for always," he said. "I don't wonder at the swallows. Do you, Miss Lilly?"
Eva smiled, but shook her head.
"It is very nice of them to be considering about it," she replied, "for, no doubt, they will be sorry to leave you and the oriel window, Ferdy—sorrier than ever before." For she understood the little boy so well, that she knew it did him no harm to join him in his harmless fancies sometimes. "But they are wiser than we are in certain ways. They can feel the first faint whiff of Jack Frost's breath long before we have begun to think of cold at all."
"Like the Fairy Fine-Ear," said Ferdy, "who could hear the grass growing. I always like to think of that—there's something so—so neat about it."
"What a funny word to use about a fairy thing," said Christine, laughing. "Ah, well, any way we needn't think about Jack Frost or cold or winter just yet, and a day like this makes one feel, as Ferdy says, as if the summer must last for always."
It had been a great, an unspeakable comfort to the family at the Watch House, all thinking so constantly about their dear little man, to have this lovely weather for him. It had made it possible for him to enjoy much that would otherwise have been out of the question—above all, the being several hours of the day out of doors.
The big doctor had come again, not long after the day I told you of—the day of Miss Lilly's grandfather's visit, and of the presentation of the "old Jerry stick," as it came to be called. And he gave leave at last for Ferdy to be carried out of doors and to spend some hours on the lawn, provided they waited till a special kind of couch, or "garden-bed" in Ferdy's words, was ordered and sent from London. It was a very clever sort of couch, as it could be lifted off its stand, so to say, and used for carrying the little fellow up and down stairs without the slightest jar or jerk.
And Ferdy did not feel as if he were deserting his dear oriel window, for the nicest spot in the whole garden for the daily camping-out was on the lawn just below the swallows' home. And watching their quaint doings, their flyings out and in, their "conversations," and now and then even a tiny-bird quarrel among the youngsters, came to be a favourite amusement at the times, which must come in every such life as Ferdy had to lead, when he felt too tired to read or to be read to, too tired for his dearly loved "cutting-out" even, clever as he was getting to be at it.