"
Everybody talked at once then. Uncle Felix and the children fell to
explaining the signs and traces they had already discovered, each
affirming vehemently that their own particular sign was the loveliest
--the dragon-fly, the flowers, the wind, the bending reeds, even the
lizard and the bumble-bee. The chorus of sound was like the chattering
of rooks among the tree-tops; in fact, though the quality of tone of
course was different, the resemblance to a concert of birds, all
singing together in a summer garden, was quite striking. Out of the
hubbub single words emerged occasionally--a "robin," "swallows," an
"up-and-under bird"--yet, strange to say, so far as Stumper was
concerned, only one thing was said; all said the same one thing; he
heard this one thing only--as though the words and sentences they used
were but different ways of pronouncing it, of spelling it, of uttering
it. Moreover, the wind in the feather said it too, for the sound and
intonation were similar. It was the thing that wind and running water
said, that flame roared in the fireplace, that rain-drops pattered on
the leaves, even house-flies, buzzing across the window-panes--
everything everywhere, the whole earth, said it.
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