A soft sweet day. A gentle rain had fallen all through the night, and the sense of spring was everywhere. Soft mellow sunshine flooded into the house. How the chestnut buds glistened in the sunlight, all damp, and sticky, and a few even had begun to uncurl.

The almonds were out in sheets of rosy pink blossom. Bees were humming everywhere, and thrushes were piping their jubilant strains on every gnarled apple tree.

I asked at breakfast for my little maid, but I was told that she was not yet down, and even our irreproachable butler Fremantle seemed almost inclined to laugh, if such a sedate and irreproachable person can descend to such levity, as he told me that Miss Bess, he feared, would be a little late that morning.

I had, as it happened, many letters to answer, and so forgot to trouble about Bess, for I had heard her chirp like a bird between six and seven in the morning, and therefore was not anxious. I remembered now that Bess had been often up to tea at the Red House of late, and that when Constance and she had met, they had whispered much, and that Bess had often caught her hand and held it tightly before parting, and then bubbled over with happy laughter. Once, when I asked Bess the cause of all this mystery, she replied, “Only white secrets, mum,” and Constance had laughed too, and repeated the child’s words, “Only white secrets.”

Whilst I stuck down my letters, I recalled these little half-forgotten episodes, when suddenly the door was flung open with a bang, and Bess stood before me; but not my every-day little Bess in short petticoats, and white pinafore, and her locks hanging round her, with a mane like a Church Stretton pony’s, but my little Bess clothed in a fancy-ball costume, in that of a diminutive jester of the fourteenth century, with cap and bells, in little yellow and pink tights with satin embroidered vest, and her luxuriant locks confined in a cap.

She entered shaking her bells merrily, and as I started up in surprise, she exclaimed, “Don’t say anything, mamsie, please don’t. Wait till you have heard my verse, or you will spoil everything. Constance has learnt it me, and I have said it over and over again. You see it is All Fools’ Day, and I must give you a surprise, for Nana says, a surprise is next best to a birthday.”

And then my little girl faced me, in the middle of the old chamber, with the great stone altar as a background, and piped aloud in her gay childish way. The old rhyme somewhat altered—

It is an old rhyme, and I am told that Constance had taught it to my little maid. I stood looking at my dear little fool, all blushes and sweet smiles. “Constance,” continued Bess, “was sure it would make you laugh.” And then, after a pause, she added, “I have not done yet. Listen; I know all the funny things, pit-pat. Miss Weldon may not find me clever, but Constance says I learnt at once what she taught me. You see, mum, it is all fun, and fun with Constance is better than boxes of sugar-plums;” and here my little lass began to cut a hundred capers, to jingle her bells, and to dance gaily, calling out, “There are heaps of funny things to do. I must send Burbidge on a sleeveless errand, tell Absalom to go for the map of the Undiscovered Islands, and send CÉlestine for pigeons’ milk, and won’t she be cross! Crabs won’t be in it, no, not if they were steeped in vinegar for a month, Nana says.” And away danced my little lass into the brilliant April sunshine.

I did not catch what she said to the old gardener outside, but I heard a deep roar of laughter from Burbidge, and a bass duet of guffaws, from Absalom and Roderick; and a minute later Burbidge entered from the garden and told me, his face beaming with honest pleasure, that “Miss Bess was the gayest little Folly that had ever come to Wenlock, and would surely make folks laugh like an ecall come what might.”

A few minutes later, and Bess flew off to her old nurse and to Auguste, and both I heard, by their shrill exclamations, affected to be overcome with laughter at her approach. Inside and outside, on this first of April, I heard sounds of merriment, as if a return to old customs had come back, and as if loud and jocund mirth had not died out of simple hearts. I thought of all the old games, plays, quips, and pranks, that the old walls of the Abbey Farmery must have heard and seen in the Middle Ages, for even the monks allowed times of folly and revelry, at Yule-tide and Candlemas, I have read; and on the first of April, All Fools’ Day, many must have been the hearty laugh, and simple joke, that folks made and passed on each other in Wenlock town, and all over old England.

I popped my letters into the box for post, and stepped out, as my task for the day was accomplished. The morning was enchantingly beautiful. “Old Adam” glistened beneath the sundial like a wondrous jewel, the eyes in his tail seemed of a hundred tints. He appeared, as Buffon said, “to combine all that delights the eye in the soft, and delicate tints of the finest flowers, all that dazzles it in the sparkling lustre of gems, and all that astonishes it, in the grand display of the rainbow.” His tail appeared of a hundred tints, and the red gold of the featherlets round the eyes flashed as if illuminated by fire. His grey, subdued wives, walked meekly beside him, and cast upon him humble glances of admiration, while he strutted before them with the pride of a Scotch piper, and expanded his tail with a strange mechanical whirr, that recalled the winding-up of some rich, elaborate, modern toy.

Down by the Abbey pond I saw the two swans swimming, but, every now and then, the male bird seemed almost to leap out of the water in the delight of spring, and beat the water with his great snowy wings as he drove across the glass-like expanse at a furious rate, making the little wavelets rise and fall and dance, in a crystal shimmer over reeds and grass.

Suddenly a little moor-hen dipped and bobbed out of the reeds. With an angry cry, one of the swans went for her, and I thought, for a moment, the poor little bird must have fallen a victim to his murderous beak; but the little black bird, as Burbidge would have said, “was nimble as ninepence,” and doubled, and dived, before her enemy could reach her. It was very good to be out. Life seemed enough. The island in the centre of the Abbot’s pond had become a sheet of primroses, and looked as if it had been sown with stars; and as I stood in the garden, the scent of the crimson ribes reached me. What a rich perfume it was! and what a distance it carried. In the full sunshine it was almost like incense, swung before the high altar of some old-world cathedral. I wandered away into the red-walled garden. How busy Burbidge was! The fir branches and matting were to be taken down off the tea-roses, and away from the beautiful purple and lavender clematises, my autumn splendours.

Beautiful Mrs. George Jackman, that shone like a great full moon in the dusk on clear summer nights, was now to be allowed “to open out,” as gardeners say, and the sun and soft winds were once more to play with her tender leaves, and delicate tendrils.

Then the exquisite tea hybrid roses, such as Augustine Guinoiseau la France, and that richest of all the noisettes, William Allen Richardson, were to dispense with their protecting fir branches. The time had come for them to feel the joy of full sunlight again, and the tree peonies were no longer to be enveloped in tawny fern branches, or to lie smothered in litter.

As I stood in the pathway, I heard Burbidge walking up and down the paths, giving orders in the Shropshire tongue that I love so well.

A mantle of spring splendour had fallen upon all. Lines of yellow crocuses shone like threads of gold. Crown Imperials were opening their rich brown, metallic-looking blossoms. Pink and white daphne bushes perfumed the air, and I noted that a host of hungry bees were humming greedily round them. Chionodoxas of all shades, were looking enchantingly fair. The blue Sardensis was opening its petals, of the same wonderful sapphire-blue shade as the Alpine gentian. Then in blossom also I noted Chionodoxa LuciliÆ, that had the delicacy and daintiness of a piece of china, and lovely Alleni, that recalled the beauty of a sunset sky when the gold is dying, and when celestial amber is dissolving and melting into exquisite tones of mauve and lavender.

A little later, I found Burbidge hard at work pruning my great bed of hybrid teas, and hybrid perpetual roses, that I have planted with alternate rows of old Dutch and Darwin tulips, with English and Spanish irises, and with lines of grape and Botryoides hyacinths. “Us must get a bit of the bush off,” said my old gardener, as he plied his pruning scissors. I begged him, however, not to cut my hybrid teas too hard, as now so many gardeners are inclined to do, for roses in Shropshire, it seemed to me, did not like too much of the knife, or of the French drastic treatment. “Let it be a rose bush in England,” I pleaded.

“Right you are, ma’am,” replied Burbidge, “for there’s many as uses the knife as a child the whip. Most of the roses here be on their own roots, and so, healthy and abiding. Manetti stuff have blooms big as saucers the first year, but go out the next year like candles as the wind’s overmastered. They be like most fandangles—no stay in them.”

So saying, my old friend plied his scissors vigorously, and the click, click, resounded all through the garden. Before I left the red-walled garden, I had a word with my old gardener about my hedge of Austrian briars. What a wonderful single rose it is, and the variety is very ancient. Parkinson mentions it in his “Theatre of Plants,” and calls it “the vermilion rose of Austria.” If we prune it this year, we shall get no flowers, I lamented, and I am always very loth to let the pruning shears work their will with my pet rose. Then I turned to my moss roses: pink, white, purple, and the most beautiful variety of all, the old crested. They were all big bushes and must be kept in shape, but should not be pruned in the ordinary sense.

Besides these sorts already named, I grow in my garden the beautiful roses of Japan—the purple and white, and the semi-duplex kinds, all of which bear such superb hips in the autumn. I told Burbidge that we must net some of the bushes in autumn, and that I would try later and get some German recipes for making them into preserves. In Elizabethan days, I have read, “Cooks and their ladies did know how to prepare from hips many fine dishes for their tables.” Burbidge scoffed at this notion. “Let the wild things be, marm,” he said to me; and added, “I never heard of much that was good wild, but nuts.” At this I laughed and replied, “Wait and see—and taste.”

Burbidge told me, that he proposed to carry out the bees in their little wooden houses next week. “Come next Thursday, bee operations should begin,” my old friend assured me. Nine was the hour chosen, and, if fine, “us will have the masks, so that come a breakage the little brown folk can’t come to us—and the vermin make sore flesh of us.” To-day, as I went into the tool-house I heard the bees buzzing angrily, as if they could not keep quiet for anger.

“To-morrow,” Burbidge then informed me, he and the boys would paint all the “bees’ homes over, save the lips, in different colours.” These must, in his language, remain “simple;” but “come Thursday, us will take off the zinc stopper on each, and then the little brown uns can roam as they list.”

All last winter, since November, the bees had lived in the tool-house, and had been artificially fed for the last fortnight, so that, to use my old friend’s words, “they be fair nasty with temper, and buzzin’ like an organ on fire.” And now nothing remained but for Auguste, as he always did, to make them one last meal of burnt sugar, and solemnly to “inviter ces messieurs À faire leur miel.” Their appointed time of liberty was at hand, and in a few days the little brown folk would fly into the sunshine with pÆans of joy.

I went into the tool-house with Burbidge. Burbidge is a man of order. Every night he makes “his boys” hang up the tools, after cleaning them with care. Those not in use shine brightly against the wall. Every night they are rubbed clean with a rag steeped in oil. Great strings of onions hung from the massive oak beams. During bad days in winter, when the snow lay on the ground, Burbidge and his men mended the fruit nets, painted the water-cans a brilliant red, or green, made wooden labels, and got ready, as they called it, “for the comin’ of summer.”

There, along one side, were the beehives, some eight in all—all to be painted in different colours. Burbidge holds the view that no two should be painted the same colour, so that each hive, as he calls it, “should drop on their own colour sharp.” What truth there may be in this idea I cannot say, but I was delighted to oblige my old friend in this respect, for I, too, like bright colours in a garden.

Burbidge took out of an oak locker his colour board for the year. “I know, marm, as yer be tasty with a needle,” he said, “and I’ll leave it to you to say what pleases you and the brown folk most.” I suggested shades of blue, and told him of the Scotch belief that bees of all colours love blue best. But Burbidge would not admit this. “I never heard that in Shropshire,” he said stoutly. “Don’t believe it, nor a letter of it. Orange or purple, I believe, be every bit as good as blue.” Then I asked Burbidge about the old Shropshire bees that learned folks in bee-lore have told me were descended from the old wild bees that the British had, and of which there are still swarms in straw skeps in far-away farmhouses nestling against the Clee. But about these wild bees Burbidge knew nothing, but only felt certain that anything “as be Shropshire born be bound to be good.”

Then I chose the colours—red, flame, crimson, salmon, mauve, pink, the delicate shade of the autumn crocus, jonquil yellow, and one or two shades of blue—and particularly the dear old-fashioned bleu de Marie that one meets in an Italian sky, as beautiful in its way as the breast of “old Adam” (the peacock) against a yew hedge on a fine March morning in full sunlight.

It was a lovely spring morning on that Thursday, the appointed day for the removal of the bees to summer quarters.

Bess and I had a cup of milk and a slice of bread and butter, the best of all morning breakfasts, and ran out to see the sport. Burbidge was there with his boys, looking all of them like marauders, or moonlighters, for their faces were clothed with masks and their hands were covered with thick gloves.

Bess grasped tight hold of my hand. “Mamsie, how wicked they look, as if they meant to kill some one,” she whispered.

As to Mouse, she could not contain her displeasure. She gave a series of low growls, and, for all she knew them, did not like their coming too near us.

Burbidge propped back the garden gate with a stout staff. Then they carried the little wooden houses out. What an angry sound of buzzing went on inside, as the men bore them along. “Steady, steady!” cried Burbidge, in a tone of command, “or the little brown people will burst themselves with rage, and then, boys, it will be run for it who can.”

After this note of warning, “the two boys” advanced very gently and placed the beehives in turn along the side of a path under the shade of an apple grove, and stood them facing south and east. “That be your home,” said Burbidge, and then gravely proceeded to whisper “a charm.” What that was I have never been able to discover, for Burbidge declared it to be a secret between him and the little brown ’uns, and if it was known the good would go with “gossamer wings.” There is something about spring and blossom, and sun, and gentle rain, an old woman once told me, but the exact words old Nelly Fetch wouldn’t tell me, and declared, like Burbidge, “that charms and rhymes were best kept between bees and bee-keepers, same as words to the bees when death had visited a family.” It is believed in Shropshire that bees are canny, touchy folk, and that those who wish to keep them must be civil and knowledgeable, and, “plaize ’em as little sweethearts,” as an old cottager once said to me, “or the bees wud mak’ yer rue it.”

“Whispering a death” is still a common custom. I remember once asking a farmer’s wife, who used to be noted for her bees, if she had any honey to sell, and being gravely told that she was out of bees, for that they had forgotten when the master died to whisper his death to them, and in consequence the bees had taken to the woods in displeasure.

Bess and I watched the proceedings, and when all the hives were fixed in their places, we put on old aprons and helped to daub on the paint. Burbidge had mixed little cans of each colour, pink, yellow scarlet, and flame, crimson, jonquil, and blue. Bess was delighted with the little pots and the brushes. “Mamsie, I am certain of one thing,” she said, “paints are next best to water.” And in a few moments the little face, hands, and pinafore, reflected all the colours of the rainbow.

In ten minutes or so, we had given each hive one coat of colour, and we never give more. Then we all went and stood at the other end of the garden to see the effect of our handiwork.

“Fine, very fine,” exclaimed Burbidge, admiringly. “A horse in bells couldn’t look smarter.” And Bess added, “Mamsie, it’s like a bunch of flowers, only there are no leaves.” As we remained there, Auguste came on the scene. He appeared with a pail of syrup to feed the bees, for bees will always feed with avidity when put out first into the air, however dainty or reluctant they have been to eat when kept in confinement. A large bottle with a broad opening, full of thick syrup, was filled, and fixed upside down on the top of each hive. We heard behind the perforated zinc a mighty din. “Messieurs les abeilles crient pour leur dÎner,” said Auguste.

Overhead was the sunshine, and the bees scented the breeze. Burbidge filled each bottle, and then replaced the wooden lid of each hive. “Stand back, marm!” he cried, “and you, too, Monsieur.” Then Burbidge called his “boys,” and they removed the little pieces of zinc that had kept the bees so long prisoners. Out they flew with exultant hums and buzzes.

“They wud have liked to cut their way through,” cried Absalom, “but zinc, for all their cunning, be the masters of they.”

“They’ll be contented now,” laughed Burbidge. “Sugar and sunshine, what more can a bee desire?”

There is a great art in making bee syrup, like there is in doing most country things. Syrup should be clear and of the right thickness, and not too liquid; above all, it should not be too thin, so as to pass too quickly through the muslin, or, in Burbidge’s words, “it would drown the bees like flies in a jar of cream.”

After watching the bees come out and fly round in exultant joy, Bess and I returned to the house, for, as Bess said, the “bee play” was over for to-day. How busy the little brown people will be gathering fresh honey, flying amongst the arabis and searching for celandines and primroses.

We went in, and Bess ran up to her lessons. Alas! study to my little maid is always a period of sadness. “Real children never like lessons,” is my little girl’s dictum. They don’t like useless things; and to Bess, French, geography, history, and music are all useless and worthless acquisitions. As I sat and embroidered in the Chapel Hall, I was suddenly told that a boy outside wished to speak to me. I left a carnation spray, a copy of a design of one of Mary Queen of Scots’, and looked up to welcome Thady Malone, a little Irish lad, who, with his father and mother, had lately come into the parish.

Thady is the terror of the locality, and the hero of all the naughty-boy stories of the neighbourhood.

According to my old gardener, who looks at him with an evil eye, “Thady be more devil than boy.” Burbidge declares that Thady is a plague, and a sore to the town, and “wull be the death of some ’un, unless he kills hisself first.” The fact is, Thady has done every naughty thing conceivable. He has fired woods, put strings across roads, I have been told, to try and trip up his natural enemy, James Grogan, the reigning policeman, and even put logs across the little local line, I have been assured; but this he stoutly denies himself. He has been thrashed by indignant farmers for running their sheep, and yet, as Bess says, always turns up “naughty and nice,” with the politest of manners, which he gets from “auld Oireland,” and the sweetest and most innocent of baby faces out of which natural wickedness ever peeped.

A minute later and Thady stood before me, bare-legged and bonny, with an expectant smile in his eyes. I opened the conversation by asking him from where he came? “Right from Mrs. Harley.” And he added, with a catch in his throat, “The poor lady is like to die entirely, judging by what Mrs. Betty said, and so I have come to you to see what your leddyship can do to stop the disease.”

Thady spoke in the most engaging brogue, and he had the sunniest, pleasantest smile in the world. He stood before me, with his little bare feet shyly touching the fringe of the carpet.

No other child in the old town goes barefoot. He is known at Wenlock by the nickname of “Naughty Bare-legs,” and has a shock of curly hair and dancing grey-blue eyes.

“I’ll come at once,” I said. “But why, Thady, have they sent you?”

Thady scratched his head and looked puzzled, declared he didn’t know, but protested there was nothing he wouldn’t do to oblige Mrs. Harley, for all, he averred, “she’s a hathan, and never says a prayer to the blessed Virgin.”

It appeared that once some naughty boys at Homer nearly succeeded in drowning Mrs. Harley’s tortoiseshell kitten, but that Thady, hearing the poor little beast mew, fearlessly came to its rescue, fought his way through the thick of the band of miscreants, and told them they were nothing but base robbers, that they should be the death of something bigger; and before they had recovered from their surprise, had dashed through the ring, plunged out of the brook, and carried off poor pussie victoriously. After this, Mrs. Harley had always been a friend of his, filled his pockets with damsons in autumn, and apples, and when the world turned a cold shoulder on him, never failed to hold out to him the hand of friendship.

“For all I’m bad,” Thady would say, with a twinkle in his eye, “Mrs. Harley never believes the worst of me, and says (God bless her!) the day will come when the country will be proud of me.”

There was no time to be lost, so I followed the little bare-legged messenger out of the room, ran upstairs, put on my hat and cape, and whistled my great dog to heel. I said before starting, “Is there nothing I ought to take to her?”

Whereupon Thady answered impetuously, with the romance of his people, “There’s just nothing at all. It’s just your face, my leddy, which the poor body wants to get a sight of, considerin’ it’s never the shadow of the blessed Virgin that she can bless her eyes with.”

So without another word, Thady and I passed out of the Abbey, hurried across the emerald velvet of the Cloister lawn, and let ourselves out by the little side wicket, and so up the meadow past the station and away to the top of the hill. “I cannot run any more,” at last I cried to Thady, who had set the pace. “We must walk. See, even Mouse is panting.” Thady stopped, and then we settled down into a walk, and began after a few minutes to chat.

Thady looked at Mouse. “Proud I’d be, my leddy,” he said, “if I owned such a dog. The constable, I’m thinking, would look a small man beside me then.”

At this sally I had the ill-nature to suggest the constable could shoot Mouse. Whereupon Thady, with Hibernian readiness, replied, “Now I’m thinking the dog would bite first.”

A little later a bird flew across the path, upon which Thady cried out, “A Kitty wren, begorra!” and before I could stop him, had picked up a pebble to throw at a little golden-crested wren that I saw running up a spray of yew.

“Stop, stop,” I cried; “don’t throw it.”

“Why not?” said Thady. “There’s no law in England or Oireland against killin’ a wren, beside”—and he what the Shropshire folks call “rippled over” with laughter—“’twould be a pretty shot.”

But I begged him to desist, and Thady, who is civility itself, or, as he quaintly expresses it, “born dutiful entirely to a leddy,” dropped his stone and we walked on. After a few minutes’ conversation, I discovered that Thady Malone was a naturalist of no mean repute, that he could imitate the call and various notes of most of the wild birds, and that he knew where to find their nests. “And if it’s after such,” he added gallantly, “that yer fancy takes yer, I’ll lead yer and show yer the rarest birds that fly. Only wait another fortnight, pheasants, hawks, magpies, jays, blackcaps, blue-bonnets, Nanny washtails, heather lenties, red-poles, cutty wrens, corbie crows, Harry redcaps, and scores of others.” Many of Thady’s names I did not know, but Thady was graciously inclined, and assured me that he would “learn my leddyship the true names.” “I don’t call them after the books whatever,” he asserted, “but same as the gipsy folks, and by the names known by the people that lived in London, and elsewhere, before us settled in Wenlock.”

So it was agreed that Thady and I were to spend a day in the woods.

“Let it be Saturday,” said Thady, authoritatively, “for then there’s no school to plague the life out of a fellow. I can climb and you can cap,” by which Thady meant that I was to carry the eggs.

“Thady,” I said, as we parted at Mrs. Harley’s wicket, “you must come for me some Saturday. We will go into the woods, and I will bring out luncheon, and you shall climb the trees, whilst I and Bess will search the ground; but we will take no nests, only look at them and see the eggs.”

“Leave the eggs, and what for will her leddyship do that?” asked Thady, surprised. “That wud be like catching a hare and not finding it in the pot the night after.”

“Well,” I remonstrated, “when you come with me, you must play my game of bird-nesting. Anyway, I can promise there will be nothing sick, or sorry, where we have gone.”

Thady at this laughed a little contemptuously, and a second later vanished behind a hedgerow, and I entered Mrs. Harley’s cottage.

It was a lovely morning, bright and joyous. The air was full of spring odours, and in the song of the birds I only heard the echo of universal joy. Yet I knew, the moment I entered the cottage, that the hand of Death was about to beckon my old friend away from the good and useful life, that she had led so well and bravely, to the other side of the bourn from which no man returns.

Old Bessie met me. “Her’s goin’ fast,” she whispered, and stood a moment in the sunlight, hot tears almost blinding her poor old eyes. Then, as I hesitated, she touched me gently on the arm and murmured, “Come up, come up. Glad her’ll be to see you, for all her’s done with Homer, and this world too.” So I mounted the stairs and again found myself in Mrs. Harley’s presence.

Outside beyond the Severn and the Wrekin, the sun was shining gaily. Inside the little chamber, all was spotlessly clean, I noted, as I entered the bed-chamber. I saw the dying woman wanted something, from the way in which her face moved.

“Light, light,” she murmured as I touched her hand; and then, very low, “A fair day to go Home.”

“Her’s been talking of nothing but goin’ home,” said Betsy, reverently; “and her’s goin’ sure, same as gospel truth.”

“All’s at peace,” whispered my old friend, and took a long, far look of the great hill of which all Shropshire men are so proud. So, smiling tenderly and loving the distant scene, her head sank back, and she seemed gently to fall asleep.

“How peaceful!” I said, awestruck.

“The Lord have a-called her, and her work be done,” said Betty solemnly, a little later. “’Tis a good thing,” she added, “to have done good work, and I think the Lord loved her for all she was lowly and never trod in high places.”

Then I left Betty, and the triumphant serene face, in the little whitewashed chamber. As I departed, I was conscious of having touched the fringe of a very holy garment.

I passed out. And as I met the gladness of the outside world, I knew that some of my old friend’s radiance was still lighting my path. After all, I know no better or more blessed things than simple faith, and a noble life, ended by His supreme grace.

Mouse followed at my heels, dutifully walking close behind me. It is curious, the way in which a dog that is often our companion, reflects our mood. The great hound knew that I was absorbed, and gave way to no frolic, chased no rabbit, but kept near, watching me out of her topaz eyes solemnly and with marked concern.

A great stillness seemed to belong to the afternoon. The sun was hidden beneath tender lavender clouds. I crossed a stile and walked amongst the budding grass. Suddenly out of a wood, for the first time in the year, I heard the mystic voice of the cuckoo, calling, calling as if out of a dream.

What a delightful eËrie sound it is! Not like a real bird, but like some voice from another world, with its strange power of reiteration, a voice which we cannot do otherwise than listen to; for, as Sir Philip Sidney said, “The cuckoo cometh to you with a tale to hold children from their play, and old men from the chimney corner.” From all time men have loved his cry. In the “Exeter Book” occurs the passage—

I did not see the bird, which lent enchantment to his song. I listened, with budding daisies at my feet, and over Wenlock spire a magic purple light. He seemed to me no bird, but a spirit calling to the world with a gladness that we cannot know. Death and winter must come, but for all that, spring is here, he seemed to say.

Death had come near me, even touched me half an hour ago, but for all the solemn sadness I felt a brief time ago, the joy of life seized me afresh.

As I wandered home across the peaceful fields, the Cuckoo’s call seemed spoken and repeated from coppice to hedgerow, and in every mossy dingle. The old nursery rhyme I used to say in childhood came back to me—

Yes, I say, fly he must, with summer which is “the sovereign joy of all things,” as Piers Ploughman wrote long years ago, and then autumn, and the long chill nights of winter.

There is always a mystery about the cuckoo, as to where he comes from, and where he goes. Far down in the south of India, I have been told, is the only place where the cuckoo is to be found summer and winter alike, calling in the tropics his strange, mystic cry. Be this as it may, he is never with us in Shropshire till the second week in April, and vanishes like a ghost early in August.

Some days later, and it was Palm Sunday, one of the great festivals of old England during the Middle Ages.

There is but little sign left now of the blessing of the boughs, as the rite was performed in mediÆval times, save that nearly all the boys present had cut sprigs of the wild willow and placed them in their button-holes, and my little maid, by her old Nana’s wish, had a spray pinned in also, amongst the ribbons of her hat. What a lovely blossom it is, that of the wild willow. How delicate the soft grey, and how lovely the brilliant shades of gold. How wonderful is the mixture of both colours, and how exquisitely gold and grey melt into each other.

As I sat in our pew on the northern side of the church, I thought of the old Church Service that once was held there. After the Mass, I have read, it was usual that there should follow the hallowing of the branches and flowers by the priest. I thought, as I sat in church in Protestant England, of how the priest, up to the first half of the sixteenth century, and for long centuries before, stood forth in scarlet cope and blessed the sweet branches and the first flowers of the year. I liked to recall the old rite and custom of entreating the Almighty to bless and sanctify “his creatures,” by which was meant branch and blossom, which were laid by lay brothers and novices at the foot of the altar, and then it was nice to think how branch and blossom were broken up and blest, and a spray given to all the devout people assembled. It was a pretty and holy usage, and I could not but feel regret, that so gracious a rite was lost. It must have been a delightful service for little children to witness, and a sweet memory for the old who could remember the happy springs of years gone by.

As we came out of church, I told Bess about the old custom. And Bess said dryly, “Now we have to bless our palm branches ourselves;” and added with the strange intuition of a child, “I think it was better when God did part of it, don’t you, mamsie?”

After the service, we took a stroll into the picturesque old churchyard, surrounded by old black and white timber, and Georgian houses of glowing red brick. There was standing by the door by which we entered the church, the remains of an old stone cross and several tombs, which, I have been told, were brought from the ruined Abbey Church. The grass was full of glittering daffodils, which shone like stars, and the scent from the ribes and Daphne bushes filled God’s acre with sweetness. Bess and I walked round the churchyard.

I told her of the little room over the church-porch with its little narrow window. Such a holy little room, I said. In such a room, I think, holy Master George Herbert must have written; and from that I went on to tell my little girl about Sir Thomas Botelar, the first priest who lived at Much Wenlock after the expulsion of the monks.

“Tell me about him,” said Bess, eagerly. “I like to hear about good monks and priests from you, although Nana says they were all wicked, and walled up poor girls. But perhaps,” added Bess, thoughtfully, “they were not all as wicked as she thinks; leastways, there may have been a few good ones just sometimes.”

After luncheon I took down the printed sheets in which are preserved Sir Thomas Botelar’s entries, for, alas! his original manuscript perished in the great fire at Wynnstay in 1859. And I read aloud such passages as I thought my little girl would follow, at least in places.

As I read aloud, Constance was ushered in. She did not know Sir Thomas’s register and begged me to go on reading, so I continued to read. The old papers, I told her in a pause, embraced eight years of Henry VIII.’s reign, went through that of Edward VI.’s, took in the whole of Queen Mary’s, and gave the four opening years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. All Sir Thomas’s sympathies were with the old order of things, I begged her to remember, and then I went on reading.

“‘In February, 1546, on the 5th day of the month, word and knowledge came to the borough of Much Wenlock that our Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII. was departed out of this transitory life, whose soul,’” Sir Thomas added, “‘God Almighty pardon.’”

“Sir Thomas Botelar,” I told Constance, “was the last Abbot of St. Peter and St. Paul’s Monastery at Shrewsbury. After the Dissolution, the King turned away all the monks, and Sir Thomas became, after a short time, Vicar of Much Wenlock, but his heart remained in the cloisters of his former abbey.”

Then I turned to a notice a little further down the page—

“‘On the 13th April of the same year three convicts were buried, and one was a child of eleven.’ Poor little girl,” I said, “what a terrible bald statement of misery! What could so young a child have done to merit death?”

“I cannot think,” exclaimed Bess. “Perhaps cursed and swore and scratched; but, even then, had she no father or mother to forgive her?”

“Only God,” said Constance, softly.

And then I begged them to listen to an account of a funeral of an excellent priest, and obviously a very learned man.

“‘Sir William Corvehill, priest,’” I read, “‘was laid in a tomb of lime and stone, which he had caused to be made for himself. Sir W. Corvehill was excellently and singularly expert in divers of the VIJ liberal sciences, especially in geometry. He was also skilled in the making of organs and in the carving of masonry, in the weaving of silk, and in printing. Besides he was,’” adds Sir Thomas, “‘a very patient man and full honest in his conversation and living.’” Then, after commending his soul to the care of God, Sir Thomas wound up quaintly by declaring that, “‘All this country hath a great loss from the death of Sir William Corvehill, for he was a good bell-founder and a maker and framer of bells.’”

Then I found a notice of a marriage. “‘Here was married,’” ran the old register, “‘Thomas Munslow Smith and Alice Nycols;’” and added, “‘The bride was wedded in her smock, and barehead.’”

“When I’m married,” said Bess, loftily, “I’ll have a veil and some flowers. Nana says it isn’t proper to be married without a veil. ’Twould be as silly as papa ploughing, or you, mama, plucking fowls.”

I didn’t enter into the question of parental ridicule, but I looked down the vicar’s entries and read, “‘Poor Sir John Baily Clerke, otherwise called John Cressage, died. It was about 9 of the clock,’” wrote Sir Thomas, “‘and at the manor place of Madeley.’”

Bess had often heard the story from me of the poor old man who, after surrendering his monastery, retired broken-hearted to die at Madeley. When I came to this part of the register, she broke out indignantly with—

“Why couldn’t they leave our abbot alone? I can’t abear that old Henry VIII. He did nothing but wicked things: cut off his wives’ heads and pulled down churches and nice buildings. Yet Nan and Burbidge call him a good man. I think people ought to be good in a different way.”

Bess was quite excited, and Constance had to take her on her knee to soothe her, and thus she sat on listening, with a scarlet face.

Then I read how, after the death of King Edward, Sir Thomas and all the people made great joy over the proclaiming of the Lady Mary Queen of England. I read also how the people of Bridgnorth “fair cast up their caps and hats, lauding, thanking, and praising God Almighty, with ringing of bells and making of bonfires in the streets,” and how the same joy was evinced at Shrewsbury, and at Much Wenlock.

In the first year of Mary’s reign on June 16th, I read that the altar of our blessed Lady within this church (of the Holy Trinity) was again built up and consecrated afresh, and evidently Sir Thomas rejoiced.

A month later, the Bishop of Worcester, the Lord President of the Marches, coming with Justice Townesynde, stopped on their road to Bridgnorth at Much Wenlock, and were entertained by Richard Lawley at the Ash, the fine old timber house in Spital Street, where, at a later date, Charles I. and Prince Rupert both slept on different occasions.

Then followed a description of the fÊte held in their honour. We learnt how the house was gaily decked with cloths of Arras, with the covering of beds, bancards, carpets and cushions, and how the table was laden with pears and dishes of apples of the previous year. We wondered how they could have been kept. Also with cakes, fine wafers, claret, sack and white wine, and after much pleasant feasting and pleasant intercourse, how “Mr. Justice rose and gave the Burgesses great and gentle thanks for their cost and cheer.”

“I wish that I, too, mamsie, had been there, for I, too, would like to have eaten pears in summer, and have seen all their gay carpets,” exclaimed Bess.

A little later on in the pamphlet I found the announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s being proclaimed Queen after the death of her sister. Sir Thomas made this entry evidently with rather a heavy heart.

As I closed the little book, Constance took it in her hand and looked over the pages.

“How many were hanged in those days!” she said sadly. “There are mentions of executions for sheep stealing, for murder, for robbery; and what a number of convicts, even children of quite tender years.”

Then she alluded to the immense age of many of the parishioners named. Agnes Pyner was said to be seven score years when she received the blessed sacrament just before death. John Trussingham declared that he was seven score years, and that at the age of four-score years he had witnessed the battle of Blore Heath; whilst John Francis, chief farmer at Callaughton, Sir Thomas declared, was aged 107 years when he was buried.

Then Constance’s fingers flitted back to a past page, and she read aloud a touching little entry about Joan of Posenhall, a fair maiden of twenty-two years, who, it was believed, “died of a canker in the mouth, which disease her father ascribed to the smelling of rose flowers.”

“Could it have been a poisoned rose?” I asked, for in those days many and subtle were the poisons used to get rid of a fair rival.

But Bess could not understand how a rose by its scent could injure any one. “In my true fairy-stories,” she said, “roses can only do good. They are only good fairies’ gifts, and I know they can only come out of the mouths of good girls—real good girls,” Bess repeated, “so I don’t see how a rose could have hurt poor Joan.”

Whereupon I explained matters to my little maid. After a pause Bess exclaimed—

“Well, I think ’tis best to live now, for anyhow we’ve only doctors to kill us.”

“To save us,” laughed Constance.

But Bess would not allow this. “To kill us is what Mrs. Burbidge says; and Nana says she won’t have a doctor in at no price for herself.”

Then Bess jumped up from her chair, and declared inconsequently that it was time to feed her puppy, and darted out of the room, and Constance and I were left alone. Upon which we fell to chatting about the great quilt. “I have chosen the flowers, as you know,” she said. And she enumerated one after another their old-world musical names. “And now I want charming words about sleep,” she added.

I suggested from Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici”: “Make my sleep a holy trance,” or “On my temples sentry keep,” again from the same author “Come as thou wilt, or what thou wilt bequeath,” from Drummond of Hawthornden, or again, “Men like visions are, Time all doth claim,” or “He lives who dies to win a lasting fame.”

“You must not also,” I said, “forget a beautiful line from Mrs. Barrett Browning: ‘He giveth His beloved sleep.’”

Before leaving me, Constance told me that she and Bess had a little game in hand—a real May frolic—“but you must not know yet, it must be a surprise.”

To this I at once gave my maternal sanction, and then the nature of the “secret” was revealed to me. Constance told me that she proposed to have a little May dance for some eight of the little school maidens, and that she would like Bess to take a part in the festivities. Eight little maidens are to dance round the maypole, which is to be decked with ribbons and many flowers, and are to sing some old songs; and she added, “If you have no objection, Bess is to say us a verse or two from some old poets in honour of May morning.”

I fell in readily with Constance’s little plans for a village fÊte, and offered the old bowling green as a site for it to take place. “The bowling green,” I said, “is very sheltered; it is surrounded on three sides with yew hedges, and I am delighted at the idea of Bess appearing as the queen of the revels.”

Bess is to be attired all in white with a crown of flaming marsh marigolds on her head, and to bear in her hand a staff decorated with primroses, cowslips, and sprays of beech and willow.

Just as Constance was leaving, Bess rushed in and seized my friend’s hand, and called out impetuously, “Have you told mamsie? May I? May I?”

I nodded “yes,” and told my little maid that she was to have a white muslin, a white wand of office, posies of primroses and shining shoe buckles. Bess was delighted, she hugged me and Constance rapturously in turns, and said “it will be the best day of my life.”

“All we must hope will be a success,” laughed Constance, as she departed up the pathway to the old gate-house; “and we must pray for sunshine for the sake of the little expectant maidens and anxious mothers.”

Next morning I confided to Burbidge the plan of our proposed revels, and informed him that I should like to ask in the villagers. Burbidge remarked in a lofty way that he had no objection—a Yorkshire expression which he acquired when a lad from a Yorkshire gardener; but added severely, that they that come must keep to the paths, not spoil his lawns, and scatter no lollipop papers, or such-like dirt.

But Burbidge’s old wife, Hester, showed a less conciliatory spirit. In a foolish moment, as I happened to meet her carrying Burbidge’s dinner to the tool-house, I confided our secret. Upon which she told me sourly that she was sorry to think “as there is to be play-acting, and even dancing on the property—the monks,” she declared, “were bad enough, but this would beat all.”

Hester is descended from old Puritan stock, and disapproves of all laughter and merriment. Burbidge, who overheard her last words of censure, exclaimed—

“Tut, tut, my dear, you was young once. I can mind thee fine as a horse in bells, for all thee’s old now and that the rheumatics lay hold on thee, sharp as scissor points. But the young uns they want their games and their plays, for all as us is getting miller’s bags on our pates.”

“Speak for yourself,” replied Hester, with acidity, puckering up her withered visage. And then she added with severity, “I never knew yet any good come out, or wisdom, of play-acting. They be devil’s works, and take my word for it,” and there she held up a bony emphatic finger, “that the devil will claim toll, for all as they seem mild and innocent.”

With which ominous remark Hester made over to Burbidge his dinner, and hobbled up the back drive homeward.

“’Tis a pity,” said Burbidge, looking after his old wife, “as good wine can turn to vinegay like that. The Lord made her, but the old ’un” (the devil) “guides her eyesight sure enough, and most times directs her tongue. The fact is,” and the old man drew himself up straight, “when yer think too much about hell, yer can never see heaven. My mother used to say that, and for all she was a Methody body, it be gospel truth.”

A few days later it was Easter Sunday. The bells rang merrily, but we hurried off to church almost late; for, according to Shropshire fashion, Bess had got a new frock on for the occasion.

It consisted of a pale mauve serge of the colour of the autumn crocus blossoms which flower in the aftermath in this neighbourhood.

For the last fortnight dear old Nanny had been too busy “to draw a breath,” to use her favourite expression, and had sewn morning, afternoon, and evening, to get my little maid’s frock completed by Easter Sunday. For it is held in Shropshire to be most unlucky not to be clad in fresh attire on that feast day of the Church. Wherefore, whatever else was left undone, Bess’s frock had to be finished for the festival.

“The rooks,” murmured Bess, as we entered the churchyard, “cannot say nothing, for all I have is new—shoes, stockings, drawers, chemise, and frock. And them,” alluding to the rooks, “them only spoils old things, does them, mamsie?”

“Oh, you’re safe,” I laughed, and we passed up the aisle.

A peal of bells was ringing gaily. “How gay and good it sounds,” whispered Bess, dreamily, “as if all the world was good and playing.” Then we walked up to our pew, and the mild delicate scent of primroses greeted us everywhere. “I wish we had flowers every Sunday,” said Bess, as she flumped down in her seat. “It seems to make God’s house like a posy. I think it must be nicer for Him so.” The old columns were festooned with garlands of flowers, and round the ancient font were placed bunches of flashing marsh marigolds and great branches of tender half-uncurled beech leaves.

Bess looked round her, and said gravely in an undertone, “I think the blessing will come this Sunday, for I feel sure that God cannot see so many flowers about without being pleased.” Then I said, “Hush!” for I feared my little maid was talking over-much.

Immediately after, the morning service began. At the close, as the last hymn died away, Nana took my little maiden off, whilst I remained on for the most beautiful, and the most solemn, of all our Church services.

The sound of retreating footsteps was at last hushed. The children had all left, and many of the people. Then there was a pause, and then the opening prayers, and I saw, in the dim light of the chancel window, the vicar breaking the bread and preparing the wine, and we were invited to the Lord’s Table.

“The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” I seemed to hear the solemn words as in a trance. Outside, through the old perpendicular window, the sun was shining faintly, and from the glad world without I heard the birds singing in a joyous chorus. Inside, the great and solemn rite of Christianity was being administered, and faith and love of Him who died for the sins of men was visiting each faithful heart in a rapture of holy delight. A few minutes afterwards and I regained my seat. The spirit of the old world was with me. How many pious hearts have offered up prayer and thanksgiving before those altar rails! How often has the blessed Sacrament come to faithful hearts, as an elixir of the soul!

Owing, perhaps, to the joy of the world outside, there was a great sense of triumph in such an Easter Sunday. “Christ is risen!” seemed to be shouted everywhere; His body had suffered pain and death, but now the heavens were opening for the glory in which death and pain could have no place. The glory of His life was everywhere. For “with angels, and archangels, and with all the company of heaven,” could “we laud and magnify our Lord and praise the Most High.”

I came out of the church, and some of its mystic radiance seems to cling like a cloud of splendour around me. As I walked along, I thought of the founder of the town church, Roger de Montgomery, the great Earl of Shrewsbury, who founded also that of the Abbey close by. The former, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, still has its roof, and pious services are still performed there every Sunday; whereas the Abbey church of the Clugniac monks is deserted alike by prior and pilgrim. Alone, my pigeons and the jackdaws fly amidst its aisles, and only across grass and thyme can the outlines of the high altar be discerned.

I lingered at the church wicket. A soft shower had just fallen, and dew-drops glistened on the grass like pearls. A great white cross shone in splendour, still wet, but of dazzling whiteness, almost like a pillar of light in the morning sunshine. The birds on every bush and wall were chanting anthems of delight.

A minute later I passed out of God’s acre, and Bess met me in the avenue. My little maid rushed up with a bound of excitement.

“Thady is ill, mum,” she cried. “I heard Burbidge tell Nana so. He said ‘The little varmint be down with a bad leg, and he hoped that would settle him for a bit.’ And Nana said ‘she hoped it would, too, for when boys were wicked they was best in bed.’ But I’m sorry, sorry, for all Thady’s naughty, he’s never nasty.” I sympathized with Bess, and promised that we would visit Thady during the afternoon.

After luncheon, we cut Thady a slice of plum-pudding, and Bess put aside for him an Easter-egg. “I had three,” she said, “and this one is sky blue, and Auguste says that is the best colour of all and sure to bring good luck. So you’ll see, mum,” she added, “Thady will be right again and able to climb the trees in no time after he has eaten my egg.”

We prepared to start out, and took Thady the gifts contained in the basket; but Bess declared that first we must go into the ruins and pick her little friend a bunch of daffydowndillies.

“Nan says so, and I believe it,” cried Bess. “Anyway, Thady will like to look at ’em while he eats my egg.” So we wandered into the rough grass inside the ruined church to pluck a handful.

How beautiful are spring flowers. All round it was a blaze of brilliant blossoms. There were early Van Thol tulips, like flames of fire, large rings of golden daffodils, some of them with almost orange faces moving in the soft winds, and then there were patches of beautiful blue scilla sibirica, and in the distance the star-like forms of the narcissi Stella, and Cynosure.

For several autumns Burbidge and “his boys” had planted for me great numbers of bulbs, and the result was, as Burbidge said, better “than a carpet of delight.” These bulbs are now grown largely in Lincolnshire, and in parts of Ireland. When they arrived they looked small and meagre. They were not at all the splendid, sleek, fat bulbs, that come from Holland; but, to quote Burbidge, looked “poor little shy customers;” but they were glad enough to find a home in the Abbey turf. Before putting them in, we skinned back the grass, dug up the soil to about six inches, added a little leaf mould, took out any stones, and popped in tulips, daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses, and, for a later radiance when the hawthorn would be out in snow, the rich double white narcissus, that gardeners call, on account of its perfume and appearance, the gardenia narcissus.

We put in three to five bulbs in each little space. After which we carefully replaced the grass, and beat it well down, so that, after the first shower, no one could have known that we had even moved the turf. Just then much of the grass of the ruins was a sheet of glory, reminding me in its parterre-like beauty of the foreground of some early Italian painter.

Every autumn Burbidge and his workers bring wheelbarrow loads of leaf mould and decayed lawn grass, and spread them over my “bulb forest;” and the result is that every year the flower roots strengthen, and the blossoms multiply.

Bess ran from group to group, until her hands were full of different daffodils. “There’s luck here,” she cried, “and see, they glitter like gold money, mamsie—that must mean something good.”

We walked, laden with our gifts, till we reached the Bull Ring. We paused at the door of an old black and white house, with a broad pebble causeway before it. On entering the cottage we found Thady in bed.

“Well, Thady, how did it happen?” I said.

“I was after a rook’s nest,” replied Thady, “and the twig gave way entirely, and so I came down dang-swang, as the folks say here.”

“Indade,” said his mother, Mrs. Malone, “it’s afflicted I am in Thady. When he’s good he’s ill, and when he’s well he keeps company entirely with the Devil.”

“Never fear, mother, whativer. ’Tis a bad boy as can’t get good some day,” and Thady, for all his face looked white and worn from pain, he burst into an irresistible fit of laughter.

Upon this Bess showered upon him yellow daffodils, and I opened my basket containing the plum-pudding, and Bess’s sky-blue egg, and an orange or two.

“Sure and God bless you,” said the good dame, his mother, with enthusiasm. “They will please him finely, for Wenlock is as dull as ditch water, for all they boast that in days gone by once there was gay goings on here. Bull and dog baitings, according to our old neighbour Timothy Theobalds’ tales, and behind the Vicarage, cock matches fit for a king, and pretty fights between the young men behind the church. But, whatever there was then, ’tis still now, and sleepy as Time.”

As we left the cottage I met the neighbour of the Malones, old Timothy Theobalds. He was a shrivelled little old man, had been ount, or mole-catcher, for many years, had driven cattle to market, and I have also heard, was once earth-stopper to the Hunt. If what his neighbours say is true, old Timothy is not now far off a hundred. He receives annually a small pension collected from three county families, has, I am told, cakes and beer at Yule-tide from his neighbours, and in his own words, “a snap of somethin’ tasty, when he has a mind, wherever he goes.” The old man is excellent company for all his years, and has many a good story to tell, of folks long since dead, and of the wild ways and curious customs of old Shropshire, before the days of railroads, when folks still believed in witches, and in the power of divining rods, and danced, and made merry at wakes and fairs. Like many other old men, “Daddy” Theobalds is not exempt from grumbling, and can use language, I fear, “fit to blow your head off” if provoked. According to him, “Life’s a poor thing now. No fun nor luck left. Yer mayn’t even get a shillin’ nowadays for a vote if so be as yer has one; though what good a vote can do a poor man if he can’t sell it, I don’t know. They Radicals,” he told me once, “were grand at givin’; but their gifts were nought but mugs wi’out beer, or dishes wi’out beef; they brought nought when yer speered in, but fandangles, flummery and folly.”

Old Timothy I met leaning on his stick before his door, clad in a long embroidered smock. He pushed open the door. “Come in, marm,” he says, “and sit yer down before the fire.”

I entered his house whilst Bess dashed off to fetch the pug-pup, exclaiming, “We must remember it is his Easter Sunday,” and I and old Timothy were left alone.

I made a remark upon the fine day, and told old Timothy about the morning service and the lovely flowers. Old Timothy did not respond. He holds to church on Sunday, but rather as a preparation to a Sunday dinner, than anything else, I fear; but as to flowers, he “doesn’t think much of they, leastways not in churches.”

“When I war a lad,” he said, “folks kept they for May Day, and the lads and lasses then went out and pulled blossoms and danced, for the fun of the land wasn’t all dead then, as it is now. That be the proper use of blows.” Then, after a pause, in a weary voice old Timothy went on to say, “’Tis a deal decenter now, no doubt, more paint about and print readen’, but the fun and jollity be clean dead. When I war young, folks often had a tidy bit saved, and when they had ‘a do’ they spent it at home. The missus would bake Yule-tide cakes or all souls, or snap-jacks, accordin’ to the season, and the maister brewed a barrel of ale, and then the couple wud call in the neighbours. Now ’tis hoard up, and go away, as if yer could only laugh in London or Birmingham, and never a cake or a sup for friends or neighbours.

“Folks could play well enough when I war a boy,” and then old Timothy began to tell me of the old “plays” as he called them. “This place, ‘Old Wenlock,’ as us used to call it, war cheery, and jolly, in grandam’s days,” he told me. “Every spring there wud come a man with a bull. Many is the one, I have heard her say, was baited in this spot, just outside the doors. The farmers and colliers from Ironbridge would bring their dogs, and have three days’ drinking and amusement. And,” continued old Timothy, “he war a mighty fine man as cud count as his the best bull dog about. Now folks be proud of their cricket, and of their football matches, but the games can’t touch the old sports.” Then after a pause, old Timothy said solemnly, “It war a terrible undoing of England puttin’ down the old plays. I mind,” the old man added, “how mad dad war when they put down the bull-baiting at Ellesmere. There used, in the old times, to be grand goings on there. Well, one Wake Monday, Mr. Clarke, ‘the captain’ as they called him, put that down. Tom Byollin, I’ve heard dad say, war leaden’ the bull round pretty nigh smothered in ribbons, as war the good old custom, when the captain ’e comes up and ’e said, ‘What be goin’ to do with that there bull?’ ‘Bait ’im,’ said Tom, ‘we allus bait a bull at Wake’s. ’Tis our Christian custom.’ But the captain he wudn’t have it. He war allus a meally souled ’un, ’cording to dad, and one that left a good custom, to take up with a new one, and so he offered five pounds to Tom, and got round him by biddin’ too a new pair of breeks—and so there war no bull-baiten. Tom was mortal hard up, I’ve heard, but to his dyin’ day he regretted the job, and used to cry over his cups, because he had helped to ruin the land by doin’ away with a good old practice.”

“Did you ever see a bull baited?” I asked old Timothy.

“Yes, mam,” answered my old friend with pride, “when I war at Loppington, I have myself seen the sport, as quite a lad,” and as he spoke old Timothy’s eyes lighted up with excitement. “It war a royal do. For they had not only bulls, but bears. I mind me,” he continued after a minute’s hesitation, “as it war in 1825. There war great rejoicin’s. Folks druv and came in from all parts, and it war a grand celebration, and all given because the parson’s daughter war marryin’ a squire. They said as the parson paid the costs hisself bang off, he was that pleased at his daughter’s grand marriage. But then parsons were parsons in those days. They rode, shot, and wrestled, besides preachin’. ’Tis true as there war a few what objected. Now at Madeley Wakes they had grand games on too. All the colliers, I’ve heard grandam say, used to come down and bet free and easy, like gentlemen born. Many was the time, I’ve heard ’em say, folks used to see the collier folks ranged down to make a lane like for the bull or bear to pass along. My word! as old Matt Dykes used to say. It war a mighty question which looked best, beast or dog, for when ’twas a bull, they only slipt one to a time. ‘One dog one bull,’ that war what they used to say to Madeley.

“Oaken-Gates, I’ve heard say, war the last place where they baited the bull in Shropshire. And I allus say,” said old Timothy, with a spark of enthusiasm, “that ’tis a mighty fine feather in the cap of that place, as it war the last as kept up the good old English sport.”

Then old Timothy went on to tell me “how the bull in 1833 at Madeley war a mighty game ’un, and tugged that ferocious at the stake, that he broke abroad stake and all, and with the chain charged down madly, and hurted several what war standing by.”

After a pause, old Timothy went on to tell me, “how for all the Vicar of Loppington war reasonable and right minded about the old sports, there war some even then, as had ‘cakey’ and queasy stomachs about such enjoyments.” And he went on to say how Mr. Anstice of Madeley, and one Mortimer, as was vicar then, spoilt, in his own language, sport cruel. “It war in this way,” continued the old man, “the bull, a proper beast, war baited three times; first, at the Horse Inn, then at Lincoln Hill, and lastly, on Madeley Wood Green. At the last bout, Squire Anstice and Parson Mortimer they comed up with a handful of constables, but there war hundreds of colliers and decent folks looking on, and I war told that they could have chawed up constables, squire, and vicar, if they had a mind.”

“And what saved ’em?” I asked eagerly.

“Well,” answered Maister Theobalds, “for all the vicar war a little ’un deformed, and some called him as dry as a chip, he had a mighty fine tongue, and though he’d hadn’t grit enough to thresh a hen, he’d hadn’t no mortal fear, and he stood up and pleaded and spoke same as if the bull had been his brother. And the bull war sent away.”

Then after a little while Timothy added reflectively, “There be mountains in a tongue. Grandam used to say as Parson Mortimer seemed to hold God Almighty inside him when he war angry, so terrible war he, not that he ever war angry unless he waxed white hot about sin, or cruelty, as he called it. He war a little ’un to look at, but he had a mighty spirit, though lamb-like to pups, childers, and wild wounded things. The biggest fellows quailed before him when he took on in a rampage, and none of them dared sin when he war by.”

At that moment I heard my Bess tapping at the door. “Lor, bless her,” said Timothy, “’tis the little ’un; how them does grow, the childers,” and he got up and hobbled to the door. Then Bess ran in and bubbled over with excitement about her May fÊte, for she had met Constance on the road. She told old Master Theobalds that he must come down and see her May dance. “Sure I will, my pretty,” he said; “I’d like to see a May-stang again, and a mass of lads and lasses dancing round, as I have heard grandam talk about when she war a likely wench.”

Then the old man began to tell us of the old May Days, and of the long-handed-down traditions of the Shropshire May festival.

“It war the fashion,” he said, “in the old time for all the lads and lasses to wend their way to the Stanhill Coppice or down to the great Edge Wood, and a merry time they had. Old Gregson Child as war shepherd to Farmer Dawson, that lived once at the Marsh Farm, used to go with the lads, and they used to blow horns, and one or two, if they had a mind, would tootle on the flute, and others scrape on fiddles, till wood and field fair swarmed with music, and so, they say, they got them to the woods an hour or so after dawn. And after a while, the lads and lasses would twine garlands, and the lads would buss the lasses. And the lasses would cry out, but let ’em do it again, and when they had romped and sang, the boys and maids, fair smothered in May branches, mead marigolds, posies of primroses, and laxter shoots of beech and hazel, would get them to their homes and hang up garlands and posies to their lintels over their dad’s door, and take to laughter and bussing again.

“Ay, grandam used to talk of those times—merry times for all they hung for sheep stealing, sure enough, but the lads laughed ’twixt times gay as ecalls,” and the old man bent before the dying fire, and seemed in thought to plunge back to the days of the past, which even he could hardly have seen.

Then Bess and I got up, and Mouse gave a deep bark, and as I said good-bye, I repeated my invitation for the First of May.

“Lor’, mam,” replied old Timothy, sadly, as he opened the door, “it isn’t likely as I shall forget it, for a piece of jollity don’t often come my way. ’Tis dull and parson-like as they’ve made the world now. Well, it is for the young ’uns to call for the tune now.”

We passed into the sunlight, and saw the lads and lasses hastening to school, and away up the streets I saw older lads and lasses in Sunday trim, dressed for courting, and the Sunday walk.

Is the world less merry, I asked myself, since old Timothy’s grandam danced beneath the May-pole? Have we forgotten how to laugh and sing in village and hamlet, and is merry England steeped in grey mists? I thought of what I had heard, as I walked along, and tried to picture to myself that merry England of whom a stranger wrote, “A merrier, gayer people breathe not on God’s earth.” I thought of the time when the May Festival was observed by nobles, and even by kings and queens. I remembered how Chaucer, in his “Court of Love,” tells us that early on May Day “went forth all the Court, both most and least, to fetch fresh flowers, and so bring back branch and bloom.”

exclaims the courtly knight Arcite. I recalled a passage in Malory where the great prose poet makes beautiful Queen Guinevere go a-maying with her lords and ladies. In Henry VIII.’s reign the Court still went a-maying, for Hall tells us how Henry, in his youth, accompanied by his stately Spanish queen, “rose up early with all their courtiers” to enjoy the old English custom, and of how the Court went forth with bows and arrows, shooting through the green spring woods, and brought back “flowers and branches.” Shakespeare, in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” alluded to the old English holiday, and declares, through the mouth of one of his characters, that folks would not lie abed the last day of April, but rose up early to observe this rite of May, so eager were they for its fun. So keenly did Queen Bess enjoy these revels that she always longed, it is said, to lay aside the state of royalty on these occasions, and live the life of a milkmaid during the month of May.

Towards the close of the Elizabethan era, Stubbs wrote, sourly attacking all such practices. In an old brown, mouldy book by him, that I once came across in an old country house library, entitled “Anatomie of Abuses,” I read a jaundiced account of a May festival.

“The Chiefest Jewel that they bring from the woods,” he wrote, “is their May-poole, which they bring home in great veneration in this wise.” And then the old Puritan went on to recount how “tweentie to fourtie yoke of oxen were harnessed together, and how a sweet posie of flowers was tied to the typee of their horns, and so the oxen drew home the May-poole.”

Thinking over old-fashioned customs, it was impossible not to lament there is now left, to quote an old chronicler’s quaint expression, “so little worshipful mirth” in England, and that villages no longer have their dances and May Day rejoicings, as in years gone by. It cannot be other than a matter of regret to all reflective minds, that the one notion of pleasure amongst our working classes, is to sit long hours in an excursion train, and, be it said, invariably to leave their own homes.

Hospitality amongst the poor, save for a wedding or a christening, has become a thing of the past. Love-spinning, soul-caking, and well-dancing are all gone by. And England is a poorer country, I think, in that it is no longer Merrie England, as it was in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, but the England of many chimneys—in others words, the Workshop of the World.

Soft days followed Easter Sunday. The weather was exquisite sunshine and shower making a perfect combination. Burbidge was always busy. There was continually the summer sound of mowing. No longer, alas! the rhythmic swish of the scythe, but the twinkling click of the machine. Yet even this was delightful, for in the sound came the cry of summer. Everywhere the heads of the herbaceous plants in the border grew bolder and stronger. The beautiful burning bush, as my old gardener calls the Dictamnus Fraxinella, was then a foot high; and my white Martagon lilies and Lilium Auratum were all springing up gaily from their mother earth strong and vigorous; whilst my Oriental poppies, of various colours, were rearing themselves up for a June glory. Then my pansies (the seed of which I had brought from Paris a year ago) were full of promise. How rich they will be, I said, blotched and mottled in different shades of purple, lavender, and chocolate brown, and each flower later will have a face of its own, with an almost human expression. Besides these, there were Hen and Chicken daisies, or red and pink Bachelor’s Buttons, as they call them in Shropshire, and opening sprays of Bouncing Bess (which is our local name for the gay Valerian), wherever it could push its way between the old stone walls.

I wandered round the garden in the Cloisters, with its lavabo and wrought-iron gates. On the lancet windows of the Leper’s Chamber, white pigeons were cooing and disporting themselves, and running up and down along the level turf. Jackdaws amidst the ruins were hurrying to and fro on the wing, with grub or insect in their beaks. Above the chamber, where men said the service was heard by the sick, there was a mass of gold which shone like beaten metal against the cloudless sky. It was the wild wallflower in a sea of blossom. How busy all nature was—building, growing, blossoming, and budding. Certainly a fair spring morning is one of the undying joys of the world.

Later on I found myself in the little kitchen garden. The later pears were then sheets of snow, and I noticed that an apple flower was beginning to turn pink on an espalier.

Burbidge I found busily occupied in dividing the roots of the violets.

All through the winter, when frosts bound the ground, he sent me in fragrant bunches of the double Neapolitan violet, varied by bouquets of the Czar, the Princess of Wales, and the red purple of Admiral Avalon.

Now all the roots were being lifted from the frames, and little runners with minute fibrous roots planted, some eight inches apart, in shady corners.

During the summer, Burbidge and his boys will cut off every runner or blossom that may appear on these plants, and keep them, to use his expression, “round as a nest.” “I likes,” he said, “to give ’em hearts like cabbages.” The first week in September, the violet roots will be replaced in the frames “for winter blowing.”

In the mean time the frames are to be cleared, the soil renewed, and then sown with asters, zinnias, and my beautiful golden lettuces, that come over every year from the Austrian seedsman.

Next to the frames, in little narrow beds, were lines of choice daffodils, and I stopped to look at them. They were of the largest and most effective kinds. There was Emperor, and Empress, Horsfieldi, Sir Watkin Wynn, Golden Spur, Mrs. Langtry, and beautiful Madame de Graaf, and the brilliant sunset glory of Orange Phoenix.

They made a brave show and found great favour in my old gardener’s eyes. “Nothing mean about they,” he said, only the day before, complacently to me. “Look to the size. They be near the girth of roses, and fit for any nobleman’s garden.” The old man seemed to swell with pride as we looked at them together. I had not the heart to be disagreeable and to suggest that any should be plucked for vases, or to deck the altar bowls, and I saw that my old friend was relieved.

A little later I walked up the trim path empty-handed and peeped into the gooseberry and currant cages. The cages are made of fine wire netting, fixed on poles, about twenty feet square, in which were planted currants and gooseberries, to save their fruit from the wild birds. Burbidge joined me. “So,” he said, “they has nothing inside to rob them, not a ‘nope’” (as he calls the bullfinch), “nor them mischievous ‘poke-puddings’” (by which name some folks here call the tomtits) “can interfere.”

Hearing my favourites, the bullfinches, attacked, I could not help saying something in their defence. “The cock ‘nope,’ as you call him, is so beautiful,” I urged, “that surely he may have a few buds in spring, and later on get a little fruit? Besides,” I added warmly, “many people now say that he does no damage, and that the buds, that he attacks, are already diseased, and, anyway, would bear no fruit.”

But at this Burbidge waxed wroth. “The nope,” he retorted angrily, “be pure varmint for gardens, same as stoats be for poultry, and squirrels for trees; and as to his colour, ’tis like looks in lasses, it hath nought to do with character. I don’t see things, marm, as you does. When yer sweats for a thing, there be no halves in the matter. What’s a friend to my garden, I be a lover to; but what’s foreign, I be a foreigner to,” and the old man walked away in a huff.

After “our bullfinch war,” as Bess called it when I recounted to her later the little episode, I walked up the path that is edged by rows of double primroses. How lovely they were in the neatest of little clumps, white, yellow, and mauve, with here and there tufts of hen and chicken daisies, roots of the single blue primroses, brilliant polyanthuses, and the curious hose-in-hose variety, which an old South Country nurse of ours used to call “Jack-a-Greeners.” A little further on, I saw some plants of the soft Primula Cashmeriana, which bore leaves which looked as if they had been powdered with milk of sulphur, and carried umbrella-like mauve heads of blossom.

A little higher up the path I saw some fine plants of Primula Japonica with its red whorls of blossom; and at the top of the garden I came across a line of beautiful auriculas. The most beautiful of all the primulas, I think, is “Les Oreilles d’Ours,” as the French call these flowers, with their sweet distant smell, like downs covered with cowslips on dewy mornings, or golden apricots ripening on southern walls. As I passed back to the Abbey, I plucked a shoot off a black-currant bush. How fragrant the budding shoots were. They recalled the perfume of the bog myrtle on Scottish moors, only that the scent had something homely and useful, but none the less delicious.

Ten minutes later, and I was seated before my embroidery. To-day I had a blue dragon to work. I tried to see and to reproduce in my mind’s eye Burne Jones’ wonderful tints of blue with brown shades and silver lights, and so the hours passed.

In the afternoon Bess visited Thady. “Mama,” she cried, “I think Thady will soon be well, for all he was so lame on Sunday. You see he wants to get well so badly, and what people want badly they generally get. I took him some pudding and some cake, and Nana gave him some ointment. Nana,” said Bess, presently, “seems quite kind now. Do you know, mamsie, since Thady has taken her medicine, and rubbed on her lily stuff, she seems quite to like Thady.”

“Ah, my little girl,” I laughed, “you are discovering a very old truth. Nana has found a patient, and a patient always has virtues.”

Bess did not quite understand, but declared it was a good job that Nana had given up disliking Thady, for in Thady, Bess found a most delightful and useful friend. He had already made my little maid a whistle, and was then engaged in making her a crossbow, and he is a wonderful hand in whittling an ash or hazel stick in elaborate designs, all of which are delightful and rare accomplishments in Bess’s eyes.

All the week Bess ran up and down to the Red House. Bess repeated her verses for the fÊte to Miss Weldon, and gained what her governess called “word accuracy,” but all gestures and action Constance taught her, I heard. Besides this, I was told about the dance which was being practised for the great day by eight little town maidens in the disused room over the stables of the Red House, and of the music which Constance’s nice parlourmaid played. Constance endeavoured to get eight little boys to dance also; but the little lads were too shy, what an old woman, speaking of her grandson, calls “too daffish and keck-handed to learn such aunty-praunty antics,” and all that Constance could get in the way of male support was to induce eight little lads to look on, bend their knees, and bow at intervals, whilst the maidens sang and danced.

Bess was full of her verses and of her white costume, and old Nana, for all that she grumbled much at first, got stage-fever at last in her veins, and told me “that none would look as well as her blessed lamb, and seeing what the play was, and who made the dresses, and where the flowers grew, she held it to be all foolish, overgrown, mealy-mouthed righteousness on old Hester’s part to stick out so obstinate and audacious again’ a harmless bit of childer’s play.”

When I asked Burbidge if he and his men would get me some primroses and bunches of marsh marigolds, he was at first very wroth.

“Do yer take me for a loseller, marm?” he said, using the old country word for an idler. “Do yer think that I have nought to do, but to stump through wood and field, pulling blows for a May folly?”

But since the first outbreak he softened, and now he has begun to speak in a more kindly spirit, about fine primroses as grow above Homer steps, marsh marigolds as can be got near the Marsh Farm pool, and about cuckoo pint and bits of green fern, and I have little doubt that on May morning it will be found that my request has been granted.

Burbidge and Nana will always do what we want them, only give them time, as Bess says, for my little minx, young as she is, has long discovered that with old friends, and particularly old servants, there is often a great deal of bark, but happily not much bite.

One day it had been raining all the morning. Everything seemed growing. I could almost, as I looked out of the window, see the chestnut buds swelling, and the points of the yews were turning a reddish gold. Through a window I could hear the canaries singing, singing and filling the garden with melodious sounds. The sun had gently pierced the clouds at last, and here and there faint shades of delicate blue were to be seen.

Suddenly, as I sat by the window plying my needle and admiring the rain drops glistening like crystals in the grass, I saw my little friend, Thady, below on the gravel walk. “What, Thady, you here!” I cried; for Thady, to use his mother’s expression, was all himself again, bare-legged and as merry as a grig.

“Begorra, it’s me,” replied Thady, “me myself, and I’ve come to ask if yer will come a bird-nesting with me, some day?” And he added, with the courtesy that only can be found in an Irish imp, “’Twill be an honour and a pleasure to guide yer leddyship to the rarest nests in the country, and yer remember our talk some weeks ago?”

So, after a little parley, it was agreed that the following day, a Saturday, if fine, we would take our luncheon into the woods, and that Thady should climb the trees, as we had previously proposed.

We settled thus, the main point, for Thady, in his own language, “was the best man whatever at that sport.” “Whilst you are climbing,” I said, “we can look for rare flowers and ferns, and find what nests we can upon the ground.”

I asked Thady a minute later what nests he knew of.

“Galore,” he answered, grinning. And then proceeded to enumerate them: “A lintie (a linnet), a green grosbeak (greenfinch), a Harry redcap (goldfinch), a yellow yeorling by the roadside, a scobby (chaffinch), a lavrock (skylark), a cushie-doo (a wood pigeon), a cutty wren (common wren), a nanny washtail (pied wagtail) in the rocks, and two tom-titers of sorts. Then there be hawks,” he called through the window, “and one by Ippekin’s Cave as I don’t rightly know, bluish and bigger than the wind-hover (kestrel) or the pigeon-hawk, not to make mention of throstles and black ouzels (blackbirds), which just jostle same as hips and haws in October, but they’re hardly worth the point of raising of a foot to see.”

So our plans were made, and I looked forward to spending the morrow in the budding woods. Thady was to be our guide, but no eggs were to be taken. This was a matter of mortification to Thady. “Sure,” he said, on another occasion, “I thought I would have made the little lady, this year, the prettiest necklace that ever was strung, fine and rare, for the May dance; and,” he added, “yer leddyship must not forget that I have eaten of Miss Bess’s blue egg, and so glad I would be to show her a bit of favour.”

However, I succeeded in making Thady give up the project of robbing the nests, by begging him to make me a whistle, which, as my little daughter declares, is a thing that might be useful to everybody—“to a lady, to a bishop, or even to a Member of Parliament.”

The next day was a day of glorious sunshine—gay and pure—one of those rare sweet days in spring, when it does not seem possible for “rain, or hail, or any evil thing to fall.” Little Hals, to our joy, came over without governess or maid, only what Bess calls “under his own care,” which she declared was best, because there was then no need to be naughty; and Miss Weldon, to the joy of all, vanished for the day to Shrewsbury; so, to quote my little girl, “all seemed happy, and everything just pure fun.”

As the old church clock struck eleven we started.

The groom boy, Fred, led Jill, the Stretton pony, bearing a basket strapped on a saddle, which contained a simple luncheon, and off we went into the woods.

We started gaily; there were no trains to catch—always a subject of congratulation—and we only left word that we should be back for tea.

It was true that old Nana had black prognostications about what “that villain Thady would do” (for since Thady was cured, her kindly interest in him had ceased). But I laughed at her fears. “Nan,” I cried out as we left, “we will all take care of ourselves, and even Jill shall come back safe and sound.”

We walked along the town, Bess and Hals running in front, hand-in-hand, and Thady and I following leisurely behind. In a few minutes we had left the town behind us and were wandering up a lane, cut in the lime rock, bordered with yews in places, and between high hedgerows.

Hals begged that we might begin to bird-nest at once; but Thady, who was master of the ceremonies, shook his head. “Best wait, begorra, for the Edge Wood, sir,” he exclaimed; “that’s the mightiest place in the county for all that wears feathers.”

So we marched on steadily to the great strip of wood which is known in Shropshire as the Edge Wood. This strip runs for many miles, is very precipitous in places, and consists of groves of oaks, patches of yews here and there, hollies—the haunts of woodcocks—and in many parts a rough tangle of hazel is to be found. It is a sweet wild place, little visited save by bird and beast. In one place the woodcutters had cut for some hundred yards, and in the cleared spaces the ground was covered with primroses, ground ivy, and the uncurled fronds of the lady fern—still brown and crinkly. Groups of lords and ladies reared themselves up amongst their sombre leaves, and patches of dog’s mercury nodded and whispered with their cords of green grain. Overhead, the larch in a few branches was breaking into emerald splendour, whilst pink tassels at the extremities trembled here and there. Squirrels leapt into the trees and vanished at our approach, and once or twice we heard, like a distant curse, the rancorous guttural cry of the jay, and saw one disappear into the undergrowth, a jewelled flash of turquoise splendour.

In a ride below, I saw a magpie hopping about, its long green-black tail bobbing up and down on the grass. At this sight Thady gravely took off his cap and saluted him, saying aloud—

And then cried out in a tone of excitement, “Look out, yer leddyship, begorra, look out for another; for it is mirth to-day and no sorrow whatever that we must have.”

Then we plunged into the heart of the wood. Fred and Jill alone kept to the path. How lush it was, that soft moist turf in April, all teeming with moisture and freshness—not even the driest summer sun can parch or dry the soil of the Edge Wood. Here and there I saw little plantations of self-sown ash amidst beds of downy moss, and everywhere hundreds and thousands of little infinitesimal plants, struggling for existence. As I walked along I noted open glades, which later would be rosy with pink campion, or purple with the stately splendour of the foxglove. Now and then a bird flew away, and I saw at intervals the white scut of a frightened rabbit.

Suddenly Thady stopped before a yew tree. Hals and Bess followed, panting and crying out eagerly, “Where, where?” for Thady had discarded his jacket, and in a twinkling had thrown his arms round the tree. In a second he was aloft. “A lintie’s nest,” he whispered, and then peered in. A minute later he called out, “Two eggs.”

“Will you bring one down?” we said in chorus. For all answer, Thady nodded, slipped an egg into his mouth, and then proceeded to descend. We looked at the little egg that Thady held out on the palm of his hand. It was of a pale bluish white, speckled and streaked with lines of purplish brown.

After we had all peered over it, the egg was put back solemnly by Thady.

A little further on, and Thady again halted. “Here it be, yer leddyship,” he cried, in a high treble; and there, sure enough, looking upward, we discerned a nest of twigs and roots. It was quite low down, and I was able easily to lift up the children to get a peep themselves. The little nest was lined with hair and wool stolen from the neighbouring fields, but as yet there were no eggs. “A nope’s (bullfinch’s) sure enough,” said Thady, dogmatically. Then on we wandered until we paused below a fir tree. Below the bole of the tree there was no herbage, for the fir leaves had fallen like needles and had pierced and stabbed the grass to death—so it was quite bare now, not a leaf, or even a patch of moss; as bare, in fact, as a village playground.

Suddenly we heard overhead a loud, ringing clap of wings, and as we looked up, we saw an ill-made nest of sticks, and two eggs, which last we could see glistening inside, like two button mushrooms. For a minute I had a vision of a big departing bird of a soft lavender grey, and as I looked, Thady called out, “Quice,” which is the Shropshire name for the wood-pigeon. Thady was anxious to mount the tree and bring me down an egg for closer inspection; but I begged him not to do so, for the Cushat-Doos, as he tells me he has heard them called in the North Country, are very shy birds in a wild state, and I have been told will never return to a nest where the hand of man has trifled with eggs or nest.

I lingered, looking up at the shining round pink eggs with the light glimmering through the twigs; and then I mounted up the hill, which was very hard work, for both children were a little weary and hot, and I went up the incline, pulling both up as best I could. Mouse kept close to my heels. She had had dark suspicions ever since we entered the wood, and was convinced of the existence, I felt sure, of robbers, footpads, wolves, and also of innumerable vague dangers, and alarms.

We passed a blackbird’s nest, but Thady waved his hand in lofty disdain, and refused to pull back the bough so that we might look at the eggs. “’Tisn’t for dirt like that that I’ll trouble yer leddyship and the young squire to spier round,” he exclaimed. “The black ouzel is just a conny among feathered folk, or what blackberries be ’mongst the fruit.”

Thady seemed to know every inch of the ground. “It isn’t in woods or field that I forget myself,” he remarked to me, when I commended him for his knowledge of the Edge. “Devil a bit,” he said, “if I have ever lost my way along, or missed a mark or forgotten the bend of a stick; but,” he added, in a tone of contrition, “’tis in the book larning and figures that Thady Malone cannot always discern rightly.”

At last, after much puffing and panting, we reached the top of the hill.

“Like enough we’ll find a scobby’s nest in the hedge,” said Thady. Then he went on to say, “They be wonderful builders be scobbys; ‘tight and nanty,’ as folks say here.” And sure enough, a little further on, fixed in a branch of blackthorn, we saw a little nest of exquisite beauty. Outside it appeared to be built almost entirely of lichen, pulled off the bark of trees; whilst inside it was lined with hair and feathers, woven together with marvellous dexterity. There were three eggs, all of a reddish pale grey, blotched here and there with vinous patches.

As we stood watching the nest, the handsome little cock chaffinch eyed us anxiously. With a quick movement he turned round, and we caught the flash of his white wings. “A bobsome, joyous little gent,” said Thady; “a scobby, I have heard folks say, is the last bird to give over singing in summer.”

Then we sat down to luncheon. “We must eat,” Bess cried with conviction; “seeing so many nests has made me feel eggy with hunger.” All round us the birds filled the thicket with the joy of their carols. “The place fair swarms with them,” observed Thady, “but come a week or two, we shall have all the foreigners over.” By which he, doubtless, meant the arrival of all the delicious warblers that come from the South in spring, not to mention many of the cock chaffinches, most of the pipits, the yellow water-wagtails, the gorgeous redstarts, and the beautiful turtle, or Wrekin doves.

Listening to the different notes, we sat down and got our luncheon, which Bess and Hal, who had acquired the appetite of hunters, declared was fit for any king, and believed that even Nan, if she had been there, wouldn’t grumble.

“When I’m at home,” said Bess, after a pause, “I eat mutton, but here I call it the flesh of sheep,” and as she spoke she put upon Hal’s knees another slice. Hal looked at her and retorted gravely, “Mutton isn’t good, but the flesh of sheep is fit for a general.”

Thady, overhearing these remarks, exclaimed, “Begorra, it is a poor place where Thady Malone cannot eat to your leddyship’s health.” And added, “Deed, I’m like Mrs. Langdale’s chickens, I could peck a bit wherever it was.” So saying, he fell heartily to work on some huge beef sandwiches which had been prepared for him and Fred, by Auguste. A few minutes later, the girths of the saddle were loosened and Jill was allowed to graze at her own free will, nipping and cropping the tender grass with avidity.

“Mamsie,” said Bess, after the last scrap of chocolate had been eaten, and the last Blenheim orange apple munched, “have you no fairy-story to tell us, for you know, this is a real place for fairy-tales.” Then the children crept under my cloak, and I rambled on aloud about princes and princesses, giants and dragons, enchanted castles, good and evil fairies, and knights and ladies.

Thady approached our group and listened also. “’Tis better nor a theatre,” he was kind enough to say, as I came to an end at last, with the happy marriage of the prince and princess, and a description of the royal festivities on that occasion. “Begorra,” he exclaimed, “I’d like to be a man, and fight dragons and giants. Fightin’ is the life for me.”

Then we got up, packed the basket, and prepared to return homeward across the fields. Jill was caught, but could with difficulty be girthed, so enlarged had she become by several hours of happy browsing; but after a struggle the saddle and basket are put on, and we turned our heads homewards. Hals had been silent for the last few moments.

“Well,” I said, “what is it?”

“I too should like to fight,” he answered, “but it must be on a horse and in armour.”

“’Tis all one, sir,” replied Thady, cheerily, “so long as yer get a stomach full of blows and can give good knocks back. Fighting,” he explained, “is what makes the difference between boys and girls, and it is the glory of auld Oireland.”

We talked away and walked homeward. There was a nest of a cutty wren in a juniper bush, which Thady knew of, and a tomtit’s in a hollow tree, beautifully made of a mass of feathers, and in it were many tiny eggs, almost too small to touch without breaking, and Fred lifted both children up to see. A little further on, Thady pointed away to a distant orchard that encircled two lonely cottages nestling against the opposite hill. “There,” he said, “be the nest of a Harry red-cap.” But our energy had died away for bird-nesting. “It shall be for another day,” said Bess. And then added dreamily, “I didn’t think I ever could have seen bird-nests enough, but I think some other play now would be nice.”

So we walked on, Hals leading the way, and Thady bringing up the rear and whistling, as he went along, the Shan Van Vocht. Thus we returned home, Bess and Hals riding on Jill in turns. The cry of the cuckoo pursued us like a voice out of dreamland, while the scents of the sweet spring day were wafted to us on a hundred eddying breezes.

In the evening I found a note from Constance at the Abbey. She sent me a full list of the flowers she proposed working on the quilts, and added, “What do you think of these words about sleep?—

When I had written to Constance, I thought of bed in a happy sleepy state of mind. As I brushed out my hair, I went over our pleasant long day in the woods, away from men, and noise, and even home. A day spent amidst birds and beasts, looking at nests, resting on mossy banks, and seeing only the sweet, sprouting things of field and lane, is a delightful thing.

Is there anything better than a day out in the heart of the country? As I slipped into bed, Bess’s last words came back to me as she went off to her cot. “Is it really very wicked, mamsie, to take nests and eggs?—for Fred says he has done it scores and scores of times, and he doesn’t see no use in such things if they can’t make sport for young ladies and gentlemen.”

“Some day you will understand,” I had replied. “One cannot know some things when one is very young.” And I have often noticed with children, that, up to a certain age, the uneducated view of everything is the sympathetic and natural one; later, to a few, the light does come.