“Then I think I will come,” she said. “For one thing, Mary will be pleased to see both of us together, I feel sure, and perhaps it may be easier to catch her eyes if we are both there. We can fly about a little just in front of her window as we used to do, and call out to each other. But I hope she will not be crying—at least not such very large tears. It would be almost too much for my feelings,” and she gave a deep sigh—a real sigh, though it sounded like a very soft and melancholy “coo.”
So, rather late that afternoon, the two wood-pigeons set off. It was a pretty long fly to the square where Mary lived, but they thought it better not to go earlier, for as it was now autumn and the days were beginning to get shorter, they knew that the children went out for their second walk soon after their dinner, so as to come in before it got chilly.
And very often just about the time they planned to reach the Square gardens, they had seen Mary at her own window, where she used to stand looking out, after taking off her hat and jacket, and while waiting to be called to tea.
Mary loved the window of her room. It looked out to the back of the house, for the gardens I am speaking of were not those in the middle of the square in front, but much prettier ones, stretching along between one side of Mary’s Square, and one side of another Square, whose houses also looked out on them from the back. Mary knew every tree and bush that grew near her house. She used to watch them all the year round, and could tell exactly about what time the leaves began to fade and drop off, and about when the pretty new spring ones first showed, growing a little greener and brighter every day till the trees had all their summer clothes on again. She got to know when the spring was in a lazy mood, and when the autumn was in too great a hurry to come, so that her uncle used sometimes to call her his little “weather prophet.” And if she had been clever at drawing, which I am afraid she was not particularly, she could have sketched the shapes and branches of her favourite trees from memory; so well did she know how they looked when quite bare, and how they looked when in full dress, and how the steady old evergreen ones, who never vary much, hold themselves.
Her ‘favouritest’ tree was one that kept its leaves longer, and strange to say, got its new ones earlier, than any of the others. I cannot tell you what kind of tree it was. I am not sure if Mary herself knew its name. She called it in her own mind the “fairy tree,” but she did not tell any one this, as she would have been afraid of being laughed at.
But her great reason for liking this tree best of any, you can perhaps already guess.
It was—or had been—the home of the dear wood-pigeons—the Cooies!
Ah—the “had been” makes a great difference. It was their home no longer.
Was that then what Mary was crying about the day Mr Coo saw her and felt so distressed about her?
No, not exactly that.