He stood looking at Wogan a moment and then hurried off to the Colonel, who seemed, to Wogan's judgment, a man apt to give the Parson his bellyful. Wogan twitched his cloak about him, and took his road down a path, bordered by bushes. It was the path by which they had come into the Park. Wogan was determined that the Parson should not be troubled by witnesses.
From his boyhood Mr. Wogan has had a singular passion for bird's-nesting. He idly scanned the bushes as he marched, for he had heard a twig snap, and in a thick bush he saw what at a first glance certainly resembled a very large brown bird's-nest. Looking more narrowly at this curiosity there were shining eyes under the nest, a circumstance rarely found in animated nature.
Mr. Wogan paused and contemplated this novelty. The bush was deep; the novelty was of difficult access because of the tangled boughs. Wogan reckoned it good to show a puzzled and bemused demeanour, as of one who has moored himself by the punch-bowl.
'It's a very fine bird,' he said aloud. 'I wonder what is the exact species this fine fowl may belong to?'
Then he wagged his head in a tipsy manner, and so lurched down the path singing:
'I heard a bird
Sing in a bush,
And on his head
Was a bowl of punch,
La-la-loodie!'