“But stop a minute,” I said. “How is it that, if what you say is true, I haven’t seen or heard anybody in the bush, and I’ve been here since the middle of the morning?”
“Nonsense,” the man answered. “They were probably all round you but you didn’t recognize them.”
“No, no, it’s not possible. I lay here dreaming beneath a tree and there wasn’t a sound, except the twittering of a squirrel and, far away, the cry of a lake-loon, nothing else.”
“Exactly, the twittering of a squirrel! That was some feller up the tree twittering to beat the band to let on that he was a squirrel, and no doubt some other feller calling out like a loon over near the lake. I suppose you gave them the answering cry?”
“I did,” I said. “I gave that low guttural note which—”
“Precisely—which is the universal greeting in the freemasonry of animal speech. I see you’ve got it all down pat. Well, good-bye again. I’m off. Oh, don’t bother to growl, please. I’m sick of that line of stuff.”
“Good-bye,” I said.
He slid through the bushes and disappeared. I sat where I was, musing, my work interrupted, a mood of bitter disillusionment heavy upon me. So I sat, it may have been for hours.
In the far distance I could hear the faint cry of a bittern in some lonely marsh.
“Now, who the deuce is making that noise?” I muttered. “Some silly fool, I suppose, trying to think he’s a waterfowl. Cut it out!”