But his nerve was obviously shaken by his competitor's
undoubtedly fine performance, and he craked indecisively. At 4.30
a.m. I distinctly heard him utter a flat note. At 4.47 he
missed the second part of a bar entirely. Thisbe's beak, I must believe,
curled derisively; Strong-i'-th'-lung laughed contemptuously, and at
5.10 a.m. Eugene faltered, stammered and fled from the field
defeated.
The sequel I have had to build up on rather fragmentary data, but it
appears that Eugene fled as far as Pudberry Parva, and endeavoured to
cool his discomfiture in a dewy hayfield.
To him there came an old crone, the "father and mother" of all
corncrakes, who comforted him, cossetted him, and from a fund of deep
experience offered him hints on voice production. She also gave him of a
nostrum of toadwort and garlic, which mollified his lacerated chords,
and she prescribed massage of the throat by rubbing against a young
beech stem.
Within two days Eugene was back in my field. In tones that feigned to
falter he craked a few bars to open the performance. Strong-i'-th'-lung
at once rose full of pitying confidence and craked for two and a half
hours the song of the practically accepted suitor.
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