“I know one—in fact I was going to collar it when I met you.”
How far is it from here?”
“Not a hundred yards from where we are now—just ready for eggs.”
“I don’t want no eggs, but I’ll give yer a pint o’ beer for the nest—that is unless ye want it yourself.”
“I don’t particularly want it,” said the boy, who was going to show the man the nest for nothing; but he now declared he couldn’t afford to part with it under sixpence.”
“It’s worth that if it be a good’un. I’ll give you sixpence—that is, when I’ve got the nest.”
“All right. Come this way,” cried Alf, who showed the man the nest, which was imbedded in a little bunch of gorse.
Instead of tearing it out the fowler cut the branch with his knife, thus preserving, it furze and all.
He then handed his companion the sixpence.
The bottle tit, or long-tailed tit, builds the most beautiful of all English nests. It is oval in shape, like a leather bottle, and outside is one mass of that crisp white moss which one finds on apple trees and old gate-posts. There is one tiny hole the circumference of a child’s finger, and the interior is choked to its very mouth with soft and downy feathers.