Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/33

Rh game' in the Circus field for anyone who cared to go up. I liked better going walks by the river or about the fields. I liked to whistle as I went along: sometimes even I hummed tunes. The spring makes one feel so glad somehow.

One half-holiday, I remember, I got as far up the river as Morley Mill.

Just past there the bank is very high and thickly wooded. I began to go up, intending to sit there and look round a bit: there was not time to go on to the mill. Up I went by the narrow path, and all at once came upon Bruce, lying at full length on a piece of grass with a bundle of flowers and a small microscope-sort-of-thing, in his hand, through which he was looking at something. He did not notice me.—Then some earth rolled away from under my foot and went down rustling, and he raised his head slowly and saw me, and said:

'Hullo, Leicester. Is that you?'

I could think of nothing to say but, Yes, and stood still.

'What brought you out so far as this?' asked he.

'I don't know. I'm fond of walking, especially by the river.'

'Are you fond of flowers?'

'Yes.—You mean looking at them under microscopes and things? I have never done that; but I like flowers. They are so … so pleasant somehow.'

His chin flattened on his coat as he looked down, holding a grass in the fingers of the arm he leant on.

At last I said:

'You have polished that stone nicely, Bruce.'

He looked up.

'I didn't polish it! It is a piece of limestone. Would you like to look at it?'

'Thank you,' I said, 'I would.'

He held the piece of stone and the microscope for me to look. I was surprised at the beautiful shapes inlaid on it. He explained that they were shells.

I asked if I might look at some of the flowers through the microscope. Certainly, said he; had I never looked through a microscope before?