tely said: "Kapchack is in love;
do you know Kapchack is in love?" and a second afterwards the wren flew
up to the top of the wood-pile and cried out just the same thing.

Three finches passed him as he went up the garden, telling each other
that Kapchack was in love. The mare in the meadow whinnied to her colt
that Kapchack was in love, and the cows went "boo" when they heard it,
and "booed" it to some more cows ever so far away. The leaves on the
apple-tree whispered it, and the news went all down the orchard in a
moment; and everything repeated it. Bevis got into his swing, and as he
swung to and fro he heard it all round him.

A humble-bee went along the grass telling all the flowers that were
left, and then up into the elm, and the elm told the ash, and the ash
told the oak, and the oak told the hawthorn, and it ran along the hedge
till it reached the willow, and the willow told the brook, and the brook
told the reeds, and the reeds told the kingfisher, and the kingfisher
went a mile down the stream and told the heron, and the heron went up
into the sky and called it out as loud as he could, and a rabbit heard
it and told another rabbit, and he ran across to the copse and told
another, and he told a mouse, and he told a butterfly, and the butterfly
told a moth, and the moth went into the great wood and told another
moth, and a wood-pigeon heard it and told more wood-pigeons, and so
everybody said: "Kapchack is in love!"

"But I thought it was a great secret," said Bevis to a thrush, "and that
nobody knew it, except the tomtit, and the woodpecker, and the starling;
and, besides, who is Kapchack?" The thrush was in the bushes where they
came to the haha, and when he heard Bevis ask who Kapchack was, he
laughed, and said he should tell everybody that Bevis, who shot his
uncle with the cannon-stick, was so very, very stupid he did not know
who Kapchack was. Ha! Ha! Could anybody be so ignorant? he should not
have believed it if he had not heard it.

Bevis, in a rage at this, jumped out of the swing and threw a stone at
the thrush, and so well did he fling it that if the thrush had not
slipped under a briar he would have had a good thump. Bevis went
wandering round the garden, and into his summer-house, when he heard
some sparrows in the ivy on the roof all chattering about Kapchack, and
out he ran to ask them, but they were off in a second to go and tell the
yellow-hammers. Bevis stamped his foot, he was so cross be