Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/324

316 “Are you coming out?” said she, “there are two or three robins’ nests, and a spinkie’s——”

“I think I’ll leave my hat,” said Lettie, unpinning it as she spoke, and shaking her hair when she was free. Mrs. Saxton insisted on her taking a long white silk scarf; Emily also wrapped her hair in a gauze scarf, and looked beautiful.

George came out with us, coatless, hatless, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, as he was. We crossed the orchard, over the old bridge, and went to where the slopes ran down to the lower pond, a bank all covered with nettles, and scattered with a hazel bush or two. Among the nettles old pans were rusting, and old coarse pottery cropped up.

We came upon a kettle heavily coated with lime. Emily bent down and looked, and then we peeped in. There were the robin birds with their yellow beaks stretched so wide apart I feared they would never close them again. Among the naked little mites, that begged from us so blindly and confidently, were huddled three eggs.

“They are like Irish children peeping out of a cottage,” said Emily, with the family fondness for romantic similes.

We went on to where a tin lay with the lid pressed back, and inside it, snug and neat, was another nest, with six eggs, cheek to cheek.

“How warm they are,” said Lettie, touching them, “you can fairly feel the mother’s breast.”

He tried to put his hand into the tin, but the space was too small, and they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. “You’d think the father’s breast had marked them with red,” said Emily.