He looked up pitifully. The Master stood above him, smiling down; and while the Master's stature seemed to have taken some additional inches, his smile seemed to irradiate the room.
"Simeon, I begin to think it high time I raised your salary."
CHAPTER XXIII.
CORONA'S BIRTHDAY.
The May-fly season had come around again, and Corona was spending her Saturday—the Greycoats' holiday—with Brother Copas by the banks of Mere. They had brought their frugal luncheon in the creel which was to contain the trout Brother Copas hoped to catch. He hoped to catch a brace at least—one for his sick friend at home, the other to replenish his own empty cupboard: for this excursion meant his missing to attend at the kitchen and receive his daily dole.
There may have been thunder in the air. At any rate the fish refused to feed; and after an hour's patient waiting for sign of a rise— without which his angling would be but idle pains—Brother Copas found a seat, and pulled out a book from his pocket, while Corona wandered over the meadows in search of larks' nests. But this again was pains thrown away; since, as Brother Copas afterwards explained, in the first place the buttercups hid them, and, secondly, the nests were not there!—the birds preferring the high chalky downs for their nurseries. She knew, however, that along the ditches where the willows grew, and the alder clumps, there must be scores of warblers and other late-breeding birds; for walking here in the winter she had marvelled at the number of nests laid bare by the falling leaves. These warblers wait for the leaves to conceal their building, and Winter will betray the deserted hiding-place. So Brother Copas had told her, to himself repeating—
"Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum
Inplicat casas virentes de flagello myrteo...."
"Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum
Inplicat casas virentes de flagello myrteo...."
Corona found five of these nests, and studied them: flimsy things, constructed of a few dried grasses, inwoven with horsehair and cobwebs. Before next spring the rains would dissolve them and they would disappear.