Song Said to Have Been Sung by Sam page 13
After they had been sitting in the glade for ages or so it seemed to Will, he asked why the was a saw wet. "Does it sound like a wet saw?"
"No, it certainly does not. It makes a sound like a sharp, a very sharp rip saw, zinging through wood. Don't tell me that you knew that," she added beating him to the punch. Darlene was enjoying herself immensely.
"There he is again," Will said in awe, as the owl flew through a break in the trees, for a moment blocking the moon before plummeting down the glade and sinking into brooding darkness that lay still over the lake.
"That's the last we'll see of him tonight," Darlene said.
"What makes you say that?"
"When he plummets like that he is onto something. By now he will surely be feasting. By first light, he will have brought home food for his brood."
"I don't even want to think about it," Will said with a shudder.
"Wouldn't you like to see him feed his babies?"
"I would love to see him feed his babies," Will replied. "I just wouldn't want to see what he's feeding them."
"I always knew that you were a wimp," Darlene said not bothering to hide her scorn.
"And I always knew that you were a bossy boots too big for her britches," retorted Will.
The darkness began to lessen. A glimmer of light now unsilvered and diffused touched the mountain peak. Soon the crest of the mountain on the far side of the lake lost its sense of brooding menace and began to take on definition.
"If there is an Unspotted Saw-Whet Owl, there must be a Spotted one also," Will said softly, disarmingly, almost off-handedly.
Darlene was about to go into a tirade about the improbability of the existence of a Spotted Saw-Whet but then she realized that wasn't willing to take the argument to either the point of certainty or uncertainty for that matter. She wasn't sure which, she decided looking up in a moment of inspiration or perhaps seeking it.