“They must be all the uncles and aunts and cousins and relations of the Cooies,” thought Mary. “I expect I shall have to go home, after all, without seeing the secret of the forest, as they certainly don’t seem to want to let me pass in.” She was again mistaken.
Another little rustle in the air, quite a tiny one this time, and Mary felt something alight on each of her shoulders. She glanced up—yes, it was her own friends.
“Coo-coo,” they whispered to her. Then one of them or both—she was often not sure if only one, or the two together, were speaking—turned to the mass of birds clinging to the gate.
“How inhospitable you are!” they said. “What a welcome to a friend! Don’t you see she is a friend? She has the Queen’s feather, and she has learnt our language,” and then Mary felt that all the pairs of eyes of all the many birds were looking at her, and scarcely knowing that she did so, she raised her hand to her head, and touched the little grey feather nestling in her cap.
Instantly there came another flutter, and in the twinkling of an eye the gate was cleared. Still more, in some way which she could not see, it was opened, or opened itself, dividing, narrow though it was, in the middle, and the birds, as if by magic, arranged themselves in two long rows on each side, seeming to mark a path for her to step along, for of actual path there was none. Inside the gate there was just the very softest, shortest, greenest grass you could imagine, like lovely springy velvet or plush to walk on, and Mary stepped forward, feeling as if each time she put down her foot a sort of pleasure came through it.
Just at first, she scarcely took in all the wonderful things that had happened since she passed through the white gate. The rows of birds made her feel a little shy, for she saw that all their round eyes were fixed on her. But by degrees she began to notice everything more closely.
She seemed still to hear a sort of flutter and rustle that kept on steadily, and yet the birds were quite motionless—those in front of her, that is to say, but after a moment or two she turned round to see if she could find out the cause of the sounds she heard, and then she discovered that as soon as she had passed, the birds rose in couples and flew off, as if to say, “we have received her politely, and now we have other things to attend to.”
On the whole Mary was rather glad of this. The numbers of birds made her, as I have said, feel rather shy and confused.
“I only want my own Cooies,” she thought, “and not all their uncles and aunts and cousins,” and she glanced forward again, trying to see how many more she would have to pass, and at that moment, to her great delight, she caught sight of something she had not seen before.
Right in front of her was another gate, but this time it was quite a low one, she could almost have jumped over it, she fancied, and it was not white, but green—grass green, which was perhaps the reason she had not seen it till she was quite near it. And the rows of birds stopped on this side of it, and, best of all, her Cooies flew down from her shoulders and perched themselves on the gate, which opened as the other had done, for her to pass through, the last of the stranger birds fluttering off as she did so, leaving her alone with her own two friends.