"Not with our eggs at any rate, and she's always teased me dreadfully about it since. Now I want to show you the bantams. I like them best, because they're my own."
The bantams had a special wired run to themselves. They were extremely neat little birds, with prettily marked plumage, so tame that they flew readily on to their mistress's outstretched arm to eat the bread she had brought for them. Linda showed Sylvia their small house with much pride, and was particularly pleased to find two tiny eggs in the nesting box.
"We can each have one for breakfast to-morrow morning," she declared; "they must have laid them on purpose for us. I only got my bantams at Easter, and these are their first eggs. I'm hoping so much that one of the little hens will sit. Wouldn't it be lovely to have some wee chicks about as big as tomtits?"
Sylvia had not much experience with pets, but she was deeply interested in Linda's possessions: the starling that lived in a cage in the kitchen, and had learnt to say: "Come kiss me!" and "Who's at the door?"; the dormouse that was kept in a cosy box lined with hay, and would scamper round the table in the evenings and eat the nuts which were given him like a miniature squirrel; and Bute, the rough, bouncing yard dog, that slept in the big kennel, and was not allowed to come into the house at all.
"There's something else I'd like you to see," said Linda, taking Sylvia's arm, and leading her on to the lawn again, then through a small door into the kitchen garden, a delightful walled enclosure, full of currant and gooseberry bushes, young apple trees, early vegetables, and pot herbs, with patches of pinks, pansies, and forget-me-nots growing in between, and great fragrant bushes of rosemary, lavender, and southernwood, which smelled most delicious when the children rubbed them between their hands. In a corner under a blossoming syringa was a little grave, with a small tombstone at its head, on which was roughly carved the following inscription:
In Loving Memory of
JOCK
The Best and most Faithful Dog that ever Lived
Died February 27, 1907
Aged 8 Years.
"It needs cleaning up and weeding," said Linda. "We always keep it very tidy when we're at home, but of course, when the boys are away too, there's nobody to look after it. It's rather nicely done, isn't it?"
"Very," said Sylvia. "Who did it?"
"Oswald. He's clever with his hands, and he chipped it out with a chisel. It took him a frightfully long time, but he said Jock deserved it. We couldn't let him be forgotten."
"What kind of a dog was he?"