Round About a Great Estate

othed or trimmed in any way. This mere log was Cicely Luckett's favourite seat as a girl; she was Hilary's only daughter. The kitchen had perhaps originally been

ndow in its deep recess scarcely let in sufficient light, even on

sses and pieces of wood thrown carelessly aside against the wall could see into the room. Robins, of course, came every morning, perching on the sill and peering in with t

o ceiling properly speaking, the boards of the floor above and a thick beam which upheld it being only whitewashed; and much of that had scaled off. An oake

ce, which was very broad for burning wood, faggots and split pieces of timber. Bending over the grey ashes, she could see right up the great broad tunnel of the chimney to the blue sky above, which seemed the more deeply azure, as it does from the bottom of a well.

hundred years every visible sunrise had shone in at that window more or less, as the season changed and the sun rose to the north of east. Perhaps it was that sense of anc

here pushed up a sharply conical sheath, from which emerged the spadix of the arum with its frill. Thrusting a stick into the loose earth of the bank, she found the root, covered with a thick wrinkled skin which peeled easily and left a white substance like a small potato. Some of the old women who came into th

ening red. As the berries ripen, the stalk grows weak and frequently falls prone of its own weight among the grasses. This noisome fruit of clustering berries,

et flowing through the 'Mash,' a meadow which was almost a water-meadow; and the other inside a withy-bed. She pulled the 'cat's-tails,' as she learned to call the horse-tails, to see the stem part at the joints; and when the mowing-grass began to grow long, picked the cuckoo-fl

o begin. With the first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced-the two usually coincide-and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the mowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking girls was very proud because she had not lost a single wooden tooth out of her rake, for it is easy to break or

speak to him would tell her about his exploits 'a-nisting,' about the bombarrel tit-a corruption apparently of nonpareil-and how he had put the yellow juice of the celandine on his 'wurrut' to cure it

flowers. Some that were standing in the furrows were hidden up to their middles by the buttercups. Their sleek roan and white hides contrasted with the green grass and the sheen of the flowers: one stood still, chewing the cud, her square face expressive of inte

bucket between his knees, but firm asleep, and quite alone in his glory. He had had too much ale, and dropped asleep while milking the last cow, and the herd had left him and marched away in stately single file down to the pond, as they always drink after the milking. C

e full moon shone in at her bedroom window, Cicely was very careful to turn away or cover her face; for she had heard one of the mowers declare that after sleeping on the hay in the moonlight one night he woke up in the morning almost blind. Besides

away, and the wheat, still soft though fully formed, could thus be pleasantly tasted. The plaintive notes of the yellowhammer fell from the scanty trees of the wheat-field hedge, and the ploughboy who was put there to frighten away the rooks told her the bird said, repeating the song over

ge affords a seat-one of Cicely's favourite haunts-whence in spring it is pleasant to look up the brook; for the banks sloping down from the bushes to the water are yellow with primroses, and hung over with willow boughs. As the brook is straight, the eye can see under these a long way up;

ght on the ash tree yonder, but suddenly espying some one under the cover of the boughs increases his pace and rises higher. Two bright bold bullfinches pass; they have a nest somewhere in the thick hawthorn. A jay, crossing f

a few ferns, by their constant movements and scratching of the sand; so that there is a small warren on either side of the water. It is said that they occasionally swim across the broad brook, which is much too wide to jump; but I have never seen such a thing but once. A rabbit already stung with shot and with a span

he surface a small patch of green vegetation formed of the treble leaves of the water crow-foot. Towards June it will be a brilliant white spot. The slender stems uphold the cup-like flowers two or three inches above the surface, the petals of the purest white with a golden centre. They are the silver buttercups of the brook

k like shrubs. They are the strongest and the most prominent of all the brook plants. At the end of March or beginning of April the stalks appear a few inches high, and they gradually increase in size, until in July they reach above the waist, and form a thicket by the shore. Not till July does the flower open, so that, though they make so mu

height of between four and five feet, with a stem more than half an inch square. Some ditches are full of it. By the rushes the long purple spike of the loose-strife rises, and on the mud-banks among the willows there grows a tall plant with bunches of flower, the petals a bright yellow: thi

often greenish, sometimes white, occasionally faintly lilac; they are partly hidden under the dark-green leaves. Where undisturbed the comfrey grows to a great size, the stems becoming v

tall slender stalks with graceful feathery heads, reed-like, surrounded with long ribbons of grass. In the ditches hereabout, and beside the brook itself, the meadow-sweet scents the air; the country-folk call it 'meadow-soot.' And in those ditches are numerous coarse stems and leaves which, if crushed in the fingers, yield a strong parsnip-li

when the brown scum, that sign of coming warmth, rises from the bottom of the waters. Returning to the pond, it may be noticed that the cart-horses when the

st their tiny nostrils up just above the surface. There are many holes of water-rats, but no one would imagine how numerous these latter creatures are. One of Hilary's sons, Hugh, kept some ferrets, and in the summer was put to it to fi

started to swim, or whether he came swimming noiselessly round the bend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he was certain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struck him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for th

n in a part of the brook about 250 or 300 yards in length, just where it ran through a single field. The great majority were water-rats, but there were fifteen or twenty house-rats among them: these were very thin though large, and seemed to be caught as

killed a considerable amount of withy; but after all this slaughter the withy-beds recovered and bore the finest crop they ever grew. But who could have imagined in walking by the