"I felt I must wake you," Uncle Gerald whispered, just as though he were at a concert and feared to disturb the artists; "it’s the first of the nightingales—listen!" Ronnie held his breath and listened with all his might; but at first all he could hear was a soft, whispering sort of note that seemed to say Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tiô, Tik! He pressed his cheek against Uncle Gerald’s and yawned. The soft note changed to a full-throated song, full of trills and cascades and roulades and occasional odd chuckles. He supposed it was very wonderful (though he infinitely preferred Robinson’s whistling of "The Sailor’s Star"), but he was not so much interested in the nightingales as in the night. It was so big and mysterious and scented and silvery out in that moonshine, so warm and safe in Uncle Gerald’s arms. It was such _fun_ to be out so late, and to hear nightingales like a grown-up person. Ronnie’s little soul was flooded with an immense content. They listened for what seemed to him a very long time, and he was nearly falling asleep again when Uncle Gerald said suddenly, still in that hushed, concerty sort of voice, "There! isn’t that fine? But I must take you home to bed." And as they went back Uncle Gerald repeated some poetry to himself. Ronnie didn’t understand it in the least, but next day asked his uncle to "tell again that bit about fairy lands for lawns." Uncle Gerald laughed and said it wasn’t quite that, but he "told it again," and then suggested that it would be nice if Ronnie, having heard one, learned what a poet called Keats had said about a nightingale: and Ronnie, who had a quick ear and retentive memory, learned two long verses—the end of the poem, Uncle Gerald said, and used to repeat them to his uncle to their mutual pride and satisfaction. And now as he sat beside this cornfield there sounded in his head the lines— "Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears among the alien corn; * * * * * Forlorn! the very word is like a bell...." That was just what Ronnie was. He spared no pity for Ruth, though he knew all about her—for Uncle Gerald had told him. At all events _she_ had not had to go and live with an aunt at Golder’s Green, and with odious, priggish, plump cousins, who made fun of the way he talked, and took no interest whatever in India.