'Why, who can keep out Grip and me!' he cried, thrusting in his head,
and staring round the room. 'Are you there, mother? How long you keep us
from the fire and light.'
She stammered some excuse and tendered him her hand. But Barnaby sprung
lightly in without assistance, and putting his arms about her neck,
kissed her a hundred times.
'We have been afield, mother--leaping ditches, scrambling through
hedges, running down steep banks, up and away, and hurrying on. The wind
has been blowing, and the rushes and young plants bowing and bending to
it, lest it should do them harm, the cowards--and Grip--ha ha ha!--brave
Grip, who cares for nothing, and when the wind rolls him over in the
dust, turns manfully to bite it--Grip, bold Grip, has quarrelled with
every little bowing twig--thinking, he told me, that it mocked him--and
has worried it like a bulldog. Ha ha ha!'
The raven, in his little basket at his master's back, hearing this
frequent mention of his name in a tone of exultation, expressed his
sympathy by crowing like a cock, and afterwards running over his various
phrases of speech with such rapidity, and in so many varieties of
hoarseness, that they sounded like the murmurs of a crowd of people.
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