Then from every cluster two birds detached themselves, all meeting together behind Mary’s seat. And in another moment, reminding her a little of a long line of tiny choristers that she had once seen in a great cathedral, they appeared two by two—fifty couples or more—and passing forward, each pair stopped in front of the Queen and laid down a feather at the foot of her pillar. White feathers they all were.
It was so pretty—the birds’ perfect order and slow movement—the Queen’s stately beauty—that Mary forgot for a moment that she herself was to take any part in the ceremony, till a little peck on her cheek told her that the right-hand Cooie was calling her to attention.
“It is your turn now,” he whispered. “Draw out your feather. We will lead the way.”
And they did so, Mary following, the precious feather in her hand, till at the foot of what to herself she had begun to call “the throne,” she felt she should stop, and with the prettiest curtsey she could make, she laid her treasure down, a very little in front of the long row already there, and then, still guided by the two wood-pigeons, made her way back to her place, where, however, she did not sit down again, but remained standing, her heart beating rather fast, for even in the instant’s glimpse of the others that she had had, it seemed to her that hers was the whitest!
The Queen flew down from her pillar, and passed slowly along the front, looking carefully at the feathers. Then she bent down and picked one up in her beak and flew back with it. Mary shut her eyes for a moment, afraid to look, but when she opened them again and dared to glance before her, she saw that her hopes had been well-founded—Michael’s gift was no longer where she had laid it.
And there stood the Queen, the quill of the feather in her beak, so that the rest of it lay across her own snowy plumage, not snowier than it, however. She was quite silent for a minute, as if she wanted them all to see for themselves, and then came again the beautiful tones of her voice.
“This feather,” she said, “has won the prize. It has come from the islands across the sea—the islands of gorgeous colours and rich fragrance—this simple snow-white feather. Our human guest, Mary, our child-visitor, has brought it, and you see for yourselves that it has won the prize. It is the whitest of them all,” and she bent her head towards the feathers on the ground, “beautiful as they are.”
Then there came a great wave through the air; a murmur of many voices, which sounded like one solitary note on some strange soft organ: then silence again, till again Queen White Dove spoke.
“I see you all agree with me,” she said, “and I think you are generous and kind. For there is one thing to be said still, before the prize is given. You, my birds and relations, have been for many weeks seeking to win the prize: you have worked for it; you have travelled far, many of you. But Mary has not needed to do any of these things. Her feather came to her without any effort on her part—”
“Never say roast larks don’t drop into some people’s mouths,” whispered Mr Coo, who by this time was perched on his old place on Mary’s shoulder. Mary gave a little shrug, but he clung on all the same.