Page:Tom Brown's School Days (6th ed).djvu/90

 gave. Tom had often afterward reason to be thankful for that early drilling, and, above all, for having mastered Harry Winburn's fall.

Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all over the neighborhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the camp, where they cut their initials out in the springy turf, and watched the hawks soaring, and the "peert" bird, as Harry Winburn called the gray plover, gorgeous in his wedding feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger with many a roll among the thistles, or through Uffington-wood to watch the fox cubs playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, among which rumor declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered; or to the sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird's-nesting, in the season, anywhere and everywhere.

The few neighbors of the squire's own rank every now and then would shrug their shoulders as they drove or rode by a party of boys with Tom in the middle, carrying along bulrushes or whispering reeds, or great bundles of cowslip and meadow-sweet, or young starlings or magpies, or other spoil of wood, brook, or meadow; and Lawyer Red-tape might mutter to Squire Straight-back at the Board, that no good would come of the young Browns, if they were let run wild with all the dirty village boys, whom the best farmer's sons even would not play with. And the squire might reply with a shake of his head, that his sons only mixed with their equals, and never went into the village without the governess or a footman. But, luckily, Squire Brown was full as stiff-backed as his neighbors, and so went on his own way; and Tom and his younger brothers, as they grew up, went on playing with the village boys, without the idea of equality or inequality (except in wrestling, running, and climbing) ever entering their