“Go, and leave you in peace? What do you think of that for gallantry, Birdie?”
The gay-feathered inquisitor had come quite near.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?” he queried, cocking his curious head.
“He says he doesn’t like me one little, wee, teeny bit, and he wishes I’d go home and stay there. And so I’m going, with my poor little feelings all hurted and ruffled up like anything.”
“Nothing of the sort,” protested the badgered spectacle-wearer.
“Then why such unseemly haste to make my path clear?”
“I just thought that maybe you’d go back on the top of the rock, where you came from, and—and be a voice again. If you won’t go, I will.”
He made three jumps of it up the boulder, bearing a stick in his hand. Presently his face, preternaturally solemn and gnomish behind the goggles, protruded over the rim. The girl was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, contemplating the scenery as if she’d never had another interest in her life. Apparently she had forgotten his very existence.
“Ahem!” he began nervously.
“Ahem!” she retorted so promptly that he almost fell off his precarious perch. “Did you ring? Number, please.”