They advanced around the corner again, shaking the Clankers, and the noise echoed off the rocky walls, grossly magnified, so that the inside of Harry's skull seemed to vibrate with the den.
" We shouldn't be arguing." Darkstripe, Smallear, and the others whipped around to stare at Fireheart, their ears and tails flicking awkwardly as they realized he had heard their conversation.
His audience heard him with varying emotions, for all who sat there rocking quietly in the fading twilight, watching the first fireflies of the season moving magically through the dusk, had weighty matters on their minds.
Below him, the Clan cats padded drowsily from the wreckage of their dens, their tails and ears flicking in surprise when they saw Fireheart waiting where their leader usually stood to address them.
The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.
It rustled the silken garments of the ladies, and waved the long curls of the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings and the curtains of the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir, which yet was more like a hush.