“Yes,” Miss Verity replied. “That is a part that I call to myself one of the forest’s secrets. For some reason the trees are allowed to grow very thick there, and it is impossible to get in among them without tearing one’s clothes and scratching one’s face and hands. But it is a favourite haunt of the birds. I often stand near there to watch them flying in and out—pigeons especially. I could fancy it was a very favourite meeting-place for them. You can hear their murmuring voices even now.”
Mary held her breath to listen. They were at some little distance from the spot her godmother was speaking of, and though the cooing was to be heard, it sounded muffled and less distinct than she had ever noticed it before. The foliage, of which a good deal still remained on the trees, dulled the sound.
“It seems as if they were talking in whispers,” she said to her godmother, smiling.
“Or as if they were all half asleep,” Miss Verity added, “which I daresay they are. It is getting late, Mary; the light will soon be gone, and we have walked farther than you would think. We had better turn.”
They did so. Mary took good notice, by her godmother’s wish, of the paths they came by. Not that there was any real fear of her getting lost in the forest, but it was better for her to know her way about.
“That dark place can be seen so far off,” said Mary, “that I should always know pretty well whereabouts I was.”
“I think,” said Miss Verity, “I think I shall tell Pleasance to ring the big bell for you, if you are strolling about alone, and it is getting time for you to come in. You can hear it a long way off—farther off than you would ever care to go: sounds carry far in the forest.”
“That would be a very good plan,” said Mary, thinking to herself that it would be lovely to get the “run” of the forest, so as sometimes to meet her Cooies without fear of interruption.
They walked on, not speaking much. Mary was thinking of her feathered friends, and her godmother, from living so much alone, perhaps, was at no times a great talker. And the evening feeling in the air—the autumn evening feeling—seemed to make one silent. The feeling that children sometimes describe as being “as if we were in church.”
And then through the cool clear air came a soft rushing sound—nearer and nearer. There is no sound quite like it—the soft rush of many little wings. Without saying anything to each other, Mary and Miss Verity stood still and listened, looking upwards.