Woodside | Page 7

a treasure! It does seem a shame,
though, to take it from the birds."
His delight soon got the better of his scruples, especially when he heard
the gardener say,--
"There are too many birds about here already. Missus does encourage
them so, that they are as bold as possible. I can tell you, Master Jack,
who gets most of the cherries. It is not us that does; it's them birds,
especially the thrushes and blackbirds. I'm up early, and I see; and I
hear 'em too before I'm up. There they are, at the fruit as soon as 'tis
light. They have their breakfasts hours before you get yours. One
wouldn't grudge them a few cherries now and again; but to clear the
trees as they do is downright greediness, I say. And I wouldn't be hard
on them for taking a few currants, for we have plenty of them; but they
just go and strip off the largest and reddest of them, and leave the stalk
hanging, and that's all that's left of a fine bunch. Then as to the
pease--you like pease, don't you, Master Jack? your grandpa's
uncommon fond of 'em--well, I have to sow the pease pretty thick, or,
I'll warrant ye, we shouldn't have a tidy row come up at all. I have to
dodge about with netting and scarecrows to keep what we do get; for I
hate a patchy row, I do. Last winter was a very cold season. I don't
know how you found it in London, Master Jack, but here there was a
long hard frost for three weeks. We'd had a good deal of rain; then it
turned to snow, and froze and snowed again till the snow lay pretty
thick all over the ground. Then it cleared up, and the sun shone; but the
sun hasn't much power at that time of the year, so it did not melt the
snow. It was bitter cold by day, and worse at night. The birds that eat
grubs and insects could not get any food at all. So your grandma had a
big lump of fat put into a piece of coarse netting, and it was hung up in
a likely place--the long branch of a tree--where the birds could get well
at it. You should have seen the poor creatures pecking away! It was
soon gone, and we had to put more lumps into the net before the frost

went. I thought to myself it was almost a pity to try to save their lives;
it was just a natural way of getting rid of a lot of them. They do say that
dying by cold is an easy way--it's like going to sleep; so I'm not
wishing any great harm to the little things. And now, Master Jack, how
do you think these birds paid back your grandma for all her kindness?
Why, as soon as ever the frost was gone, and the weather became
warmer, and the yellow crocuses came into bloom, if these very birds,
or some of them at least, did not slit the flowers all to pieces with their
bills--that's what they did. The ground was covered with bits of
flowers.--Do you know Mrs. Jones who lives on the green, Master
Jack?"
"No," he said; "I don't."
"Well, she's a great friend of your grandma's; but she is not over-strong,
and doesn't get out in the winter. She likes to have the birds about her,
and she fed them on her lawn with crumbs and pieces; and her fine bed
of crocuses in front of her windows was just spoiled. It was mostly the
yellow ones that they tore to shreds; and the primroses too--there was
hardly one fit to pick. The starlings and the sparrows were the worst;
they did a lot of mischief."
"Oh," said Jack, "perhaps they were after insects, or something they
wanted to eat. I don't believe they meant to do any harm."
"Perhaps not," said the gardener; "but the crocuses were spoiled all the
same. You know, Master Jack, I'm about the place summer and winter,
and I see a lot. Now, if there's one thing more than another that I hate
about a garden, it's cats. They do trample down things and spoil the
beds. As this house is lonesome rather, we don't get much of that pest,
I'm glad to say; and then Smut is not a sociable cat. But I'll tell you of a
curious thing that happened to him one day. There was a pair of
thrushes who had built their nest in the laurel hedge at the bottom of the
garden next to the field. You know, Master Jack, there's a broad gravel
path along the garden side of the hedge. One day, just