“Mademoiselle!” A blade of grass beside Maya was set swaying.
“Goodness gracious! Where do you keep coming from?”
“The surroundings.”
“But do tell, do you hop out into the world just so, without knowing where you mean to land?”
“Of course. Why not? Can you read the future? No one can. Only the tree-toad, but he never tells.”
“The things you know! Wonderful, simply wonderful!—Do you understand the language of human beings?”
“That’s a difficult question to answer, mademoiselle, because it hasn’t been proved as yet whether human beings have a language. Sometimes they utter sounds by which they seem to reach an understanding with each other—but such awful sounds! So unmelodious! Like nothing else in nature that I know of. However, there’s one thing you must allow them: they do seem to try to make their voices pleasanter. Once I saw two boys take a blade of grass between their thumbs and blow on it. The result was a whistle which may be compared with the chirping of a cricket, though far inferior in quality of tone, far inferior. However, human beings make an honest effort.—Is there anything else you’d like to ask? I know a thing or two.”
He grinned his almost-audible grin.
But the next time he hopped off, Maya waited for him in vain. She looked about in the grass and the flowers; he was nowhere to be seen.
