She had been unusually heckled that morning, as all of us are at
times, by being obliged to do many things for the which she had little
liking. The spot was a favorite one of Nora's.
There was a shelter of rocks above, almost like a cave or roof, and
below there was a tiny stream of water that ran out of a spring in the
back of the hill and sang its way down the slope to the brae below.
In this pool Nora nearly always laid some field flowers, because they
kept fresher there than anywhere else. From the low seat that Nora had
made out of a stone in the back of her shelter she looked out into a
sunny place in the woods, around which stood, as if they were pillars
of a woodland palace, six gray beeches.
Now upon this sunny afternoon that I am speaking of, hardly had Nora
reclined upon her bench, feeling a bit drowsy no doubt with the heat,
yet not quite sleepy you know, listening to a robin singing with
the voice of Eden, when she heard a light tapping on the wall of the
largest beech, the one that was nearest to the place where she was
lying. At first when she heard this sound she thought that it was the
robin redbreast that she had noticed hopping up and down in the open
place in the sunlight, and yet she knew well that robins do not drum
upon the bark of trees like woodpeckers.
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