The Book of Small
British Columbia Nightingale
My sister Alice was two years older than I and knew a lot. Lizzie was two years older than Alice and thought she knew it all. My great big sister did know everything. Mother knew all about God. Father knew all about the earth. I knew more than our baby, but I was always wondering and wondering.
Some wonders started inside you just like a stomach-ache. Some started in outside things when you saw, smelled, heard or felt them. The wonder tickled your thinking—coming from nowhere it got into your head running round and round inside until you asked a grown-up about this particular wonder and then it stopped bothering you.
Lizzie, Alice and I were playing in the garden when our Chinaboy Boy came down the path—that is how I know exactly what time of evening it was that this new noise set me wondering, because Bong was very punctual. The tassel on the end of his pigtail waggled all down the path and, as he turned out of the gate, it gave a special little flip. Then you knew that it was almost bed-time. It was just as the slip-slop of Bong’s Chinese shoes faded away that I first noticed that new noise.
The rattles got quicker and quicker, more and more, till it sounded as if millions of sticks were being dragged across millions of fences.
I said, “Listen girls! What is it?”
Alice said she did not hear anything in particular.
Lizzie said, “It’s just Spring noises, silly!”
First the sound would seem here, then there, then everywhere—suddenly it would stop dead and then the stillness startled you, but soon the rattles would clatter together again filling the whole world with the most tremendous racket, all except just where you stood.
We went into the sitting-room to kiss Father and Mother good night. The fire and the lamp were lighted. Mother was sewing—Father looked at her over the top of his newspaper and said:
“Listen to British Columbia’s nightingale, Mother! Spring has come.”
Mother replied, “Yes, he certainly does love Spring in the Beacon Hill skunk-cabbage swamp!”
“Come along, children!” called Big Sister.
It came pouring in through the dormer window. When the candle was taken away it seemed louder because of the dark. I called to Big Sister as she went down the stair, “Please may we have the window shut?”
“Certainly not! Stuffy little girl! The night is not cold.”
“It isn’t the cold, it’s the noise.”
“Noise? Fiddlesticks! Go to sleep.”
I nosed close to Alice, “Do you know what nightingales are Alice?”
“Some sort of creature.”
“They must be simply enormous to make such a big noise.”
Alice’s “uh-huh” was sleep talk.
I lay trying to “size” the nightingale by its noise. Our piano even with sister Edith pounding her hardest could never fill the whole night like that. This nightingale’s voice crackled through the woods, the sky and everywhere. The band that played in the Queen’s birthday parade died when you lost sight of it. This sound of something which you could not see at all filled the world. Why,