Then, on a bough above him, a little dusty-looking bird tried to sing, but it sounded only like a very small door creaking on tiny rusted hinges.

A fat, gluttonous robin that had been hopping about to peer at him, chirped far more cheerfully as it flew away.
Just at this point he suffered a real adventure.

Eight cows sauntered up interestedly and chewed their cuds at him in unison, standing contemplative, calculating, determined.

It is a fact in natural history not widely enough recognised that the domestic cow is the most ferocious appearing of all known beasts--a thing to be proved by any who will survey one amid strange surroundings, with a mind cleanly disabused of preconceptions.

A visitor from another planet, for example, knowing nothing of our fauna, and confronted in the forest simultaneously by a common red milch cow and the notoriously savage black leopard of the Himalyas, would instinctively shun the cow as a dangerous beast and confidingly seek to fondle the pretty leopard, thus terminating his natural history researches before they were fairly begun.
It can be understood, then, that a moment ensued when the little boy wavered under the steady questioning scrutiny of eight large and powerful cows, all chewing at him in unison.