Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/45

Rh ‘It is she,’ said the red weasel, laughing in his throat; ‘but her eyes are hidden by her fingers, and she cannot see.’

‘It is not she,’ said a brown wren. ‘Her cheek was full and rosy, and her song loud. This one sitteth all mute and pale.’

‘It is she,’ said the red weasel, ‘who sitteth upon the mountain, her face hidden between her hands. She sitteth in silence, and who can tell her thoughts? She hath been to the great city.’

‘It is a small place,’ hummed a honey-bee. ‘Once, long ago, she raised her white palm between her eyes and its smoke. “See,” she laughed, “my little hand can cover it.”’

‘It is so great,’ said the red weasel, ‘that those who leave the mountains for love of it return to us no more.’

‘Yet she hath returned,’ said a lone lark hanging in the sky, ‘and I myself have sung beside her ear.’

‘She came, yet she came not,’ said the red weasel. ‘What did she answer when thou saidst that I had slain thy mate?’