Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/227

 French warblers are new to me. The chiff-chaff is singing already; that makes me feel so at home. In England he seems to belong to us.'

'They are little rain-coloured birds, the fauvettes, are they not? My mother loved them best of all and said that some of their notes were like the harp. You will have to teach me their names, Jill.'

As they talked they had come round the corner of the house and before them the grove of tall sycamores made a roof of breaking green on a golden sky.

'There's a chiff-chaff singing now—silly little darling,' said Jill;—'and, oh, there's a willow-warbler;—listen, Marthe. Isn't he lovely? Yes; it is just like a harp, a far-away harp, rippling down like that!'

Jill had stopped to listen, and Marthe Ludérac scanned her uplifted face.

'You, too, love birds so much?' she said, when the willow-warbler had sung his wistful, joyful, lonely, descending scale.

'Oh—I care more for them—looking at them, listening to them—than for anything!' cried Jill.

'Even more than for hunting the fox?' Mademoiselle Ludérac questioned, smiling gently.

'Oh—what a shame!' Jill exclaimed. 'Oh, that's too bad, Marthe!—No; I feel you'll never really forgive me!'

But Marthe Ludérac took her hand, as she had done while she told her story that afternoon, and put it against her cheek for a moment, saying, 'In time, I know, this dear heart will be kind to everything.'