The flower-beds were absolutely covered with blossoms; not a trace of the dull brown earth was to be seen. Then a breeze came up from the lake, and set the flowers swinging on their stalks. But they did not swing quite in the ordinary way, for the stalks stopped still, and only the flowers themselves swung. Farther and farther they swung, this way and that, and then the sound of bells began to come out of them. The Canterbury bells and the campanulas began, because they were professional bells, but by degrees everything else joined in, lilies and roses and hollyhocks and lupins, and love-lies-a-bleeding, and every other flower that you can imagine, for they were all in blossom together this morning. Little tiny chimes, like the note of musical boxes, came from the violets, so soft that David had to put his ear among their leaves to hear them, and the loudest notes of all seemed to come from the sunflowers, but they were more like the clashing of big golden cymbals. David listened a long time in a sort of ecstasy of pleasure, and then this pealing got somehow into his bones, and he had to do something joyful too. But as he could not make a bell of himself, he must throw himself into the air, and poise like a hawk hovering, flapping his arms all the time, and stopping in the same place, and then he skimmed away with arms quite still and stretched taut, and flew over the roof of his house so close that, the tips of his fingers touched one of the chimney-stacks. Then for a long while he made an eagle-flight, going in wide circles, without moving his arms, and mounting higher and higher till the earth grew small and dim below him, and the sound of the bell-flowers died away, and he seemed to be the only thing that existed in this great blue desert of air. Of all his adventures since he came through the blue door, this was the most delightful. The sun had got low when he descended to earth again, and the flowers had ceased ringing in the garden-beds. Birds were still moving in the bushes, but none was flying now, for it was getting quite dark, and David felt that both the desire and the power of flying were leaving him, as was only natural when night came on. Once or twice he ran and jumped off the ground, but he could no longer tread the air properly: it was as if his feet broke through it. Or when he tried to mount slowly, like the lark, just dabbling the air down with his hands, his hands went through it instead of pressing it below him. But he was sure that he remembered the way to do it still, though it didn’t seem quite as easy as it had this morning. However, if he was a bird-boy, he had to fly at bird-times, and not at night, and after falling rather heavily on the gravel-path, when he tried to do the swift-trick, he thought it better to give it up till morning.