would slip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were
any rabbits hopping about. She enjoyed the skipping very much and when
she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she
heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it
was.
It was a very strange thing indeed. She quite caught her breath as she
stopped to look at it. A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back
against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe. He was a funny looking boy
about twelve. He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his
cheeks were as red as poppies and never had Mistress Mary seen such
round and such blue eyes in any boy s face. And on the trunk of the
tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him,
and from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching
his neck to peep out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up
and sniffing with tremulous noses and actually it appeared as if they
were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little
call his pipe seemed to make.
When he saw Mary he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost
as low as and rather like his piping.
Don t tha move, he said. It d flight em.
Mary remained motionless. He stopped playing his pipe and began to rise
from the ground. He moved so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though
he were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet and then the
squirrel scampered back up into the branches of his tree, the pheasant
withdrew his head and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop
away, though not at all as if they were frightened.
I m Dickon, the boy said. I know tha rt Miss Mary.
Then Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was
Dickon. Who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the
natives charm snakes in India? He had a wide, red, curving mouth and
his smile spread all over his face.
I got up slow, he explained, because if tha makes a quick move it
startles em. A body as to move gentle an speak low when wild things
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