He had found a half-fledged mavis lying dead in the grass.  Remember also how the larks had sung after rain.

Tommy lost sight and sound of Corp and the boy.  What he seemed to see was a baby lark that had got out of its nest sideways, a fall of half a foot only, but a dreadful drop for a baby.  “You can get back this way,” its mother said, and showed it the way, which was quite easy, but when the baby tried to leap, it fell on its back.  Then the mother marked out lines on the ground, from one to the other of which it was to practise hopping, and soon it could hop beautifully so long as its mother was there to say every moment, “How beautifully you hop!” “Now teach me to hop up,” the little lark said, meaning that it wanted to fly; and the mother tried to do that also, but in vain; she could soar up, up, up bravely, but could not explain how she did it.  This distressed her very much, and she thought hard about how she had learned to fly long ago last year, but all she could recall for certain was that you suddenly do it.  “Wait till the sun comes out after rain,” she said, half remembering.  “What is sun?  What is rain?” the little bird asked.  “If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.”  “When the sun comes out after rain,” the mother replied, “then you will know how to sing.”  The rain came, and glued the little bird’s wings together.  “I shall never be able to fly nor to sing,” it wailed.  Then, of a sudden, it had to blink its eyes; for a glorious light had spread over the world, catching every leaf and twig and blade of grass in tears, and putting a smile into every tear.  The baby bird’s breast swelled, it did not know why; and it fluttered from the ground, it did not know how.  “The sun has come out after the rain,” it trilled.  “Thank you, sun; thank you, thank you!  Oh, mother, did you hear me?  I can sing!” And it floated up, up, up, crying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” to the sun.  “Oh, mother, do you see me?  I am flying!” And being but a baby, it soon was gasping, but still it trilled the same ecstasy, and when it fell panting to earth it still trilled, and the distracted mother called to it to take breath or it would die, but it could not stop.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” it sang to the sun till its little heart burst.

With filmy eyes Tommy searched himself for the little pocket-book in which he took notes of such sad thoughts as these, and in place of the book he found a glove wrapped in silk paper.  He sat there with it in his hand, nodding his head over it so broken-heartedly you could not have believed that he had forgotten it for several days.