"But there's nobody to hear you at night," said Robin, who thought it was waste of a song unless there was someone near to admire it. Tom Sedge-Warbler told him, "Bless you, yes, there is – heaps of 'em. Why, only last night the Water-Lady – hold hard – I'm going to sing now – it's coming on – I can't stop!" And he suddenly burst forth like a musical box that has been wound up to go on for ever. Robin said impatiently, "Do stop for half a second! – I want to know several things." But Tom Sedge-Warbler only shook his cheerful head and went on, on, on, on, on, on… And at this moment there came a fierce and furious wind, a perfectly enormous wind, all wild and whirling. It goes about in the East Country and nowhere else, and it is called the "Roger." And it caught up Master Robin and whiffed him right away, as if he had been a little bit of straw, along with all sorts of other things, – real bits of straw, and broken leaves, and old egg shells. Away and away it took him, and at last it let him fall, most dreadfully alarmed, into a marshy bank beside a broad, where he had never been in his life before. A broad is another East Country thing. It is a large wide sheet of water. It's not a lake and not a pond – it's a broad, that's all you can say, – with reeds, and rushes, and sedges, and lovely water plants all along the shore. And it goes along-along till it comes to another broad.
Well, there was Robin, far away from the pink-washed house, in this outlandish place, as he thought it. Nobody saw him except Bill the Weasel. But Bill the Weasel knew him for a stranger, and decided to follow him all the way.
As soon as Robin had recovered his breath, he also recovered his curiosity. He set about rambling at once. To begin with, he tracked the noises. The place was full of strange noises. There was an extraordinary bleating, for one thing, which he thought was his old friend Dame Nanny-goat who lived in a field at home. But when he had tracked the bleating right up to where it began, in a tussock of rushes, old Mother Snipe flounced up out of the rushes, and shrieked, "You impertinent little Jackanapes! What are you poking after here?" And she drove him out of the rushes with angry words. But Bill the Weasel followed him all the way.
Then he saw a very odd and remarkable person with a crest. Not the kind you have on note-paper, but a frilly thing on his head. The crested person was very busy diving, and Robin went and waited on the shore till he should come up again. "Could you kindly inform me as to the best way home?" shouted Robin between the dives. The crested person was Gaffer Grebe, who was collecting wet water-weeds to make his floating nest with, for he couldn't endure dry nests that stay still in one place. "I have no time for gossiping," mumbled Gaffer Grebe, with his mouth full of building material. "It isn't gossiping! it's thirst for knowledge," said Robin. Gaffer Grebe didn't trouble himself to answer. He flapped his wings very loudly and aimed some of the wet water-weeds at the stranger.