The Song of Wren [antikvár]

The Song of the Wren Miss Shuttleworth, moving with an air of delicate vacancy that also had something quite seriously studious about it, walked up and down the banks of the little stream running through the bottom of her garden, carefully distributing various sandwiches from a big blue plate. Those of cucumber she placed on a large stone urn filled with budding violet petunias. Half a dozen of tomato she arranged about a clump of wild yellow irises growing at the water's edge. An assortment of anchovy paste, cream cheese, blackberry jam and Gentleman's Relish she set out at carefully measured intervals on the lawn that bordered the stream. When all had been distributed she stood back in a silence of contemplation that was almost reverent, surveying the result as if it were some fastidiously moulded work of art. Finally she sat down on the lawn, legs carefully folded and tucked under her, and stared dreamily first at the sandwiches and then at the water sparkling in the warm June sunshine. Since she was wearing a floppy pink cotton dress and an even floppier pink straw hat from which straggling grey curls fell untidily to her shoulders, she looked not unlike a big, resting pink moth. Her intense blue eyes, large in concentration, gave her the impression of not belonging, quite, to this world. Presently the eyes gave a sudden flutter of expectancy and then of positive, almost child-like delight. 'We're not alone, we're not alone,' she suddenly said in a sort of expanding whisper, 'we're not alone, we're not alone.' Two pairs of birds, a male and female blue tit, then a male and female chaffinch, flew with a delicate flicker over the stream, the blue tits going straight for the cream cheese, the chaffinches for the Gentleman's Relish. 9