The Judge, holding on to his temper, had exploded finally.  “If you were consistent,” he had flung at them, “you would not be decked in the bodies of birds and beasts.”

Becky loved the birds in the glass cases, the peeps and the tip-ups, the old owl who did not belong among the game birds, but who, with the great eagle with the outstretched wings, had been admitted because they had been shot within the environs of the estate.  She loved the little nests of tinted eggs, the ducks on the crystal pools.

But most of all she loved the Trumpeter.  Years ago the Judge had told her of the wild swans who flew so high that no eye could see them.  Yet the sound of their trumpets might be heard.  It was like the fairy tale of “The Seven Brothers,” who were princes, and who were turned into swans and wore gold crowns on their heads.  She was prepared to believe anything of the Trumpeter.  She had often tiptoed down in the night, expecting to see his case empty, and to hear his trumpet sounding high up near the moon.

There was a moon to-night.  Dinner was always late at Huntersfield.  In the old days three o’clock had been the fashionable hour for dining in the county, with a hot supper at eight.  Aunt Claudia, keeping up with the times, had decided that instead of dining and supping, they must lunch and dine.  The Judge had agreed, stipulating that there should be no change in the evening hour.  “Serve it in courses, if you like, and call it dinner.  But don’t have it before candle-light.”

So the moon was up when Becky came down in her blue dress.  She had not expected to wear the blue.  In spite of the fact that Randy and his mother and Major Prime had come back with them for dinner, she had planned to wear her old white, which had been washed and laid out on the bed by Mandy.  But the blue was more becoming, and the man with the Apollo head had eyes to see.

She came into the Bird Room with a candle in her hand.  There was a lamp high up, but she could not reach it, so she always carried a candle.  She set it down on the case where the Bob-whites were cuddled in brown groups.  She whistled a note, and listened to catch the answer.  It had been a trick of hers as a child, and she had heard them whistle in response.  She had been so sure that she heard them—­a far-off silvery call——­

Well, why not?  Might not their little souls be fluttering close?  “You darlings,” she said aloud.

Randy, arriving at that moment on the threshold, heard her.  “You are playing the old game,” he said.

“Oh, yes,”, she caught her breath, “Do you remember?”

He came into the room.  “I remembered a thousand times when I was in France.  I thought of this room and of the Trumpeter Swan, and of how you and I used to listen on still nights and think we heard him.  There was one night after an awful day—­with a moon like this over the battlefield, and across the moon came a black, thin streak—­and a bugle sounded—­far away.  I was half asleep, and I said, ’Becky, there’s the swan,’ and the fellow next to me poked his elbow in my ribs, and said, ‘You’re dreaming.’  But I wasn’t—­quite, for the thin black streak was a Zeppelin——­”