“Roz’lie, is he in?”
“Oh, yes, he’s up in the loft, with the pigeons.”
He climbed up the ladder, in three steps and as carefully as he could, to the dovecote. Behind a swarm of half-stretched and loose-hanging clouts and canvas things, a lad sat on an overturned tub, his fair-haired curly head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, peering through a sort of lattice-work. Jaak sat down at the other side, on a bundle of maize, in just the same attitude, and looked too....
There were white, snow-white, mottled, blue, slate-blue, russet, speckled, grey, black-flecked, striped and spotted pigeons, doves, pouters—some cocks, the rest hens—a motley crowd all mixed up together. There were some that sat murmuring one to the other, softly—oh, so softly—and nodding their heads for sheer kindliness. Others cooed loudly, angrily or indifferently and tripped round one another. Others sat huddled, meditating, lonely and forlorn, blinking their bright little glittering eyes.
Through the holes, from the resting-board, new ones came walking in with shy feet and sought a little place for themselves; others passed out through the narrow opening and, flapping their wings, rose into the sky. ‘Twas a humming and muttering without end, a murmuring and whispering loud and soft and a restless stir and movement: a little world full of neatly-dressed damsels, who were all so lightly, so prettily decked out and who knew how to manage their trains and their fine clothes so demurely and so comically. They carefully combed and cleaned their black velvet ruffs, smoothed their sharp-striped feathers one by one, fondled and rubbed their downy breasts till they shone like new-blown roses....
And Jaak and Stafke sat watching this, sat watching this, like two steel statues, sweating in that warm loft. They did not stir nor speak a single word.
And that lasted and went on....
It grew dusk. From every side the pigeons came flying in, whole troops of them, and sought their well-known roosts. They stood two and two, closely crowded together on the perches or huddled in the holes. They drew their heads into their feathered throats and slept. The rumour diminished to just a soft mumbling; and then nothing more. The pigeon that sat over there, squatting low on her eggs, faded from sight in her dark corner; and the whole upper row vanished in the dusk of the rafters.
The boys still sat on.
The dovecote became a pale-grey twilight thing, with drab and black patches here and there. The soft humming passed into a faint buzz that died away quite; and all was silence.