"--he was always
scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how
abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent
courtesy--"was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird.
It had a double pipe for the hours, 'Pit-weep! Pit-weep!' and
a single--"

His voice trailed into silence as the mechanical bird of his own
collection popped forth and piped its wooden lay. Willy Woolly pattered
over, sat down before it, and, gazing through and beyond the meaningless
face with eyes of adoration whose purport there was no mistaking,
whined lovingly.

"When the cuckoo sounded," continued the collector without the slightest
change of intonation, "she used to imitate it to puzzle Willy Woolly. A
merry heart! ... All was so still after it stopped beating. The clocks
forgot to strike."

The poodle, turning his absorbed regard from the Presence that moves
beyond time and its perishing voices, trotted to his master and nuzzled
the frail hand.

The hand fondled him. "Yes, little dog," murmured the man. His eyes, sad
as those of the animal, quested the dimness.

"Why does she come to him and not to me? He loved her dearly, didn't
you, little dog? But not as I did." There was a quivering note of
jealousy in his voice. "Why is my vision blinded to what he sees?"

"You have said yourself that there are finer sensibilities than ours," I
suggested.

He shook his head. "It lies deeper than that. I think he is drawing near
her. He used to have a little bark that he kept for her alone. In the
dead of night I have heard him give that bark--since. And I knew that
she was speaking to him. I think that he will go first. Perhaps he will
tell her that I am coming.... But I should be very lonely."

"Willy's a stout young thing," I asserted, "with years of life before
him."

"Perhaps," he returned doubtfully. A gleam of rare fun lit up his pale,
vague eyes. "Can't you see him dodging past Saint Peter through the
pearly gates" ("I was brought up a Methodist," he added in apologetic
explanation), "trotting along the alabaster streets sniffing about for
her among all the Shining Ones, listening for her voice amid the sound
of the harps, and when he finds her, hallelujahing with that little bark
that was for her alone: 'Here I am, mistress! Here I am! And _he's_
coming soon, mistress. Your Old Boy is coming soon.'"

When I retailed that conversation to the Little Red Doctor, he snorted
and said t