“Oh, look, there’s a swan!”
“Yes; there are two pair of them here. And in those trees there’s both a rookery and a heronry; the herons ought to be here by now, for they’re off to the sea in August; but I’ve not seen one yet. Stay! isn’t that one—that fellow on a stone, with his long neck bent down, looking into the water?”
“Yes! I think so. I have never seen a heron, only pictures of them.”
“They and the rooks are always at war, which doesn’t do for such near neighbours. If both herons leave the nest they are building, the rooks come and tear it to pieces; and once Roger showed me a long straggling fellow of a heron, with a flight of rooks after him, with no friendly purpose in their minds, I’ll be bound. Roger knows a deal of natural history, and finds out queer things sometimes. He’d have been off a dozen times during this walk of ours, if he’d been here: his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I only see one. Why! I’ve known him bolt into a copse because he saw something fifteen yards off— some plant, maybe, which he’d tell me was very rare, though I should say I’d seen its marrow at every turn in the woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this,” touching a delicate film of cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, “why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It’s a pity they don’t take honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would be safe enough, if they did.”
“Mr. Osborne Hamley is very clever, is he not?” Molly asked timidly.
“Oh, yes. Osborne’s a bit of a genius. His mother looks for great things from Osborne. I’m rather proud of him myself. He’ll get a Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair. As I was saying at the magistrates’ meeting yesterday, ‘I’ve got a son who will make a noise at Cambridge, or I’m very much mistaken.’ Now, isn’t it a queer quip of Nature,” continued the Squire, turning his honest face towards Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, “that I, a Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows when—the Heptarchy, they say—What’s the date of the Heptarchy?”
“I don’t know,” said Molly, startled at being thus appealed to.
“Well! it was some time before King Alfred, because he was the King of all England, you know; but, as I was saying, here am I, of as good and as old a descent as any man in England, and I doubt if a stranger, to look at me, would take me for a gentleman, with my red face, great hands and feet, and thick figure, fourteen stone, and never less than twelve even when I was a young man; and there’s Osborne, who takes after his mother, who couldn’t tell her great-grandfather from Adam, bless her; and Osborne has a girl’s delicate face, and a slight make, and hands and feet as small as a lady’s. He takes after madam’s side; who, as I said, can’t tell who was her grandfather. Now, Roger is like me, a Hamley of Hamley, and no one who sees him in the street will ever think that red-brown, big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood. Yet all those Cumnor people you make such ado of in Hollingford are mere muck of yesterday. I was talking to madam the other day about Osborne’s marrying a daughter of Lord Hollingford’s—that’s to say, if he had a daughter—he’s only got boys, as it happens; but I’m not sure if I should consent to it. I really am not sure; for, you see, Osborne will have had a first-rate education, and his family dates from the Heptarchy, while I should be glad to know where the Cumnor folk were in the time of Queen Anne?” He walked on, pondering the question of whether he could have given his consent to this impossible marriage; and, after some time, and when Molly had quite forgotten the subject to which he alluded, he broke out with—“No! I’m sure I should have looked higher. So, perhaps, it’s as well my Lord Hollingford has only boys.”
After a while, he thanked Molly for her companionship, with old-fashioned courtesy, and told her that he thought, by this time, madam would be up and dressed, and glad to have her young visitor with her. He pointed out the purple-red house, with its stone-facings, as it was seen at some distance between the trees, and watched her protectingly on her way along the field-paths.