“Nursery rhymes are very nice sometimes,” said Mrs Coo. “The verse in ‘Cock-robin’ about our cousins, the Doves, is lovely, only it is too much for my feelings,” and she really looked as if she were going to cry.
“But they are only for babies,” said Mary, “and I know that some big people are just as fond of fairy stories as I am. Michael told me so, and he gave me a book of them, his very own self, on my last birthday. Well—I must go on telling you what happened. The very next morning after I had told him my secret about you, my dear Cooies, I made him come up here to see your nest, though I told him you yourselves hadn’t been here for a day or two. And, wasn’t it unlucky?—there had been lots of wind the night before, and the nest was nearly all blown away; a branch had fallen on it, I think. It was already just like now—really nothing to be seen, except by any one who had known of it before. And you were not there either. No sign of you. So Michael looked at me very gravely and he said, ‘My dear Mary, you really mustn’t let your fancy run away with you. I can’t believe there have ever been wood-pigeons in that tree. You may have seen a pair of common pigeons from the stables over there, flying about, but it is most unlikely that there ever was a nest there; there certainly isn’t now.’ And he looked at me as if he really thought I’d been making up a story.”
“Dear, dear!” said Mr and Mrs Coo together, “it’s certainly very sad.”
“I had no time to say much more to him,” Mary went on. “He had to go away again to Portsmouth or Plymouth, or one of those ‘mouth’ places, that very afternoon, and there was no time to say any more or to ask him if he really thought I had been telling stories. But I’m sure he did, and so after he’d gone, I just stood up here and cried.”
And poor Mary looked as if it would not take much to make her cry again.
“I saw you,” said Mr Coo.
“You saw me,” exclaimed Mary, rather indignantly, “and you didn’t speak to me, or fly up for me to see you?”
Mr Coo cleared his throat.
“I did not know what was the matter,” he said, “and—I thought it best to hurry home, to—to talk it over, and then we both came the next morning—yesterday morning.”
“Well,” said Mary, “it was very good of you, but all the same, I think you might—” but after all, the question was how to put things right with Michael, so she said no more, not feeling sure, you see, but that even the gentle Cooies might feel hurt if she reproached them.