'Thank you for your kindness,' said Betty. 'But, if you please, little thrushes, the Wise Woman who lives on Bogee Down above Music Water, who sent me to this wood, said I must only ask for one note from each thrush I heard singing.'
'That is right,' chirped the little cock thrush. 'Always obey those older and wiser than yourself.'
'Ask the child what she wants thrushes' notes for,' chirped the voice from the nest. 'She didn't say, did she?'
'I forgot to tell you that,' struck in Betty. 'It is to make a song with.'
'I thought so,' piped the little cock thrush, and flying down, he put one of his most delicious notes into the tiny bottle, and in another second he was up on his bush again, singing deeper and more entrancingly than before, gratitude being the keynote and the chief utterance of his song.
Betty went down the wood with that music in her soul, and begged every thrush she heard singing to give her a note of his song.
Whether every bird's heart was also full of gladness for the freckled blue eggs in its dear little nest we cannot say, but they all gave willingly of their best, and before the child had gone through Trevillador Wood, the bottle of Small People's crystal was full to the neck with thrush-music.
Coming back, she saw two red squirrels sitting on their haunches at the foot of an oak-tree, eating nuts.
'There is a dear little maid from Padstow Town here in the wood collecting music from the thrushes. It is the same child who, unknown to herself, undid a cruel spell which the Witch o' the Well cast over Prince Fire, a near relative of the King of the Little People. She turned him into a black stone, and a stone he had to be till somebody could rub it the colour of flame.'
'You don't mean to say so?' cried the other squirrel. 'This is news.'
'I thought it would be,' said the squirrel that spoke, arching his handsome tail with importance. 'Perhaps it will also be news to you to hear that this same little maid has actually untangled the dear Little Lady Soft Winds from that great Skein of Entanglement into which the wicked old witch tangled them, and from which nobody, not even the Wee Folk themselves, was able to free them.'
'However did she manage to do it?' asked the second squirrel.