Three miles was a long distance for a child to walk to school over a
rough country. It was rough but beautiful, hill and dale, healthy
moorlands, and pine woods. It was glorious in summer, but when the
snows of winter fell and the roads were blocked, it was not quite so
agreeable.
I commenced forthwith, however, to make acquaintance with every living
thing, whether it were a creepie-creepie living under a stone, or a bull
in the fields.
My pets, by the way, were a bull, that I played with as a calf, and
could master when old and red-eyed and fierce, half a dozen dogs, and a
peacock belonging to a farmer. This bird used to meet me every morning,
not for crumbs--he never would eat--but for kind words and caresses.
The wild birds were my especial favourites. I knew them all, and all
about them, their haunts, their nests, their plumage, and eggs and
habits of life. I lived as much in trees as on the ground, used to
study in trees, and often fell asleep aloft, to the great danger of my
neck.
I do not think I was ever cruel--intentionally, at all events--to any
bird or creature under my care, but I confess to having sometimes taken
a young bird from the nest to make a pet of.
I myself, when a little boy, have often sat for half an hour at a time
swinging on the topmost branches of a tall fir-tree, with my waistcoat
pocket filled with garden worms, watching the ways and motions of a nest
of young rooks, and probably I would have to repeat my aerial visit more
than once before I could quite make up my mind which to choose. I
always took the sauciest, noisiest young rascal of the lot, and I was
never mistaken in my choice. Is it not cruelty on my part, you may
inquire, to counsel the robbery of a rook's nest? Well, there are the
feelings of the parent birds to be considered, I grant you, but when you
take two from five you leave three, and I do not think the rooks mourn
many minutes for the missing ones. An attempt was made once upon a time
to prove that rooks can't count farther than three. Thus: an ambush was
erected in the midst of a potato field, where rooks were in the habit of
assembling in their dusky thousands. When into this ambush there
entered one man, or two men, or three men, the gentlemen in black
quietly waited until the last man came forth before commencing to dig
for potatoes, but when four men entered and _three_ came out, the rooks
were satisfied and went to dinner at once. But I feel sure this rule of
three does not hold good as far as their young ones are concerned. I
know for certain that either cats or dogs will miss an absentee from a
litter of even six or more.
Books are very affectionate towards their owners, very tricky and highly
amusing. They are great thieves, but they steal in such a funny way
that you cannot be angry with them.