and act accordingly there could have been no happiness
even in that golden springtime air. But
they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his
mate knew they knew it.

At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with
sharp anxiety. For some mysterious reason he
knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment
he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he
knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin
without beak or feathers. He could speak robin
(which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken
for any other). To speak robin to a robin
is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon
always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer
gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did
not matter in the least. The robin thought he
spoke this gibberish to them because they were not
intelligent enough to understand feathered speech.
His movements also were robin. They never
startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous
or threatening. Any robin could understand
Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing.

But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on
guard against the other two. In the first place
the boy creature did not come into the garden on
his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels
and the skins of wild animals were thrown over

[[329]]

p328 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p329w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p330

v?