Mary listened eagerly.
“Do tell me about it,” she said.
“There is not time just now,” Mrs Coo replied. “Besides—” and she glanced at Mr Coo.
“We hope to do much better than tell you about it,” he said. “We mean to show it to you—that is what we want to settle about. You must meet us in the forest as soon as you go out this afternoon.”
“Yes,” said Mary. She was beginning to find out that the best way with the Cooies was to agree with their plans and never to argue with them. For sooner or later, somehow or other, they carried out what they settled, and as she was by no means sure that they were not half or three-quarters “fairies,” she did not mind giving in to them, little birds though they were.
So “yes,” she said, “I have got leave to go into the forest immediately after luncheon, and if you will tell me where to meet you—”
“You need do nothing but walk straight on through the gate from this garden,” said Mr Coo. “We shall manage all the rest. It is not going to rain, you need not be afraid,” he added, seeing that Mary was glancing up rather anxiously at the sky.
“I’m so glad,” she replied, with a sigh of relief, and just then the breakfast-bell rang.
“Good-bye, dear Cooies, good-bye till this afternoon,” she exclaimed as she ran off, and the soft coo-coo sounded in her ears on her way downstairs.
“Dear me,” said Myrtle to Pleasance, as they met on the landing, “just hearken to those wood-pigeons. They might be living in the house. I never, no never, have known them come about so, as just lately. They seem as if they knew Miss Mary was here, and were particular friends of hers,” and the old servant laughed at her own joke.