“So you’ve never seen it, sir, and it’s uncommon pretty.”
“Oh yes, I have, Wyn; I remember it quite well. Last time I was there I waded in after the lilies, and started a heron. He’d come over from the Duke’s heronry. I can’t think how Dobbles is to get there.”
“Please, sir, he can; even Mr Robertson would say it was quite safe since they made the clearing.”
If Edgar loved anything on earth, it was the wood; the great trees, the birds and the squirrels, the ferns and the flowers, gave him real pleasure, and he never felt so nearly independent and, as he called it, locomotive, as when he was out in this way with no one but Wyn.
It was perhaps as well that Mr Robertson was not there to express an opinion on the nature of the ground over which Dobbles was taken; but at last they came almost to the edge of the little woodland pond, and Edgar exclaimed with delight at the white and yellow lilies on its surface, the tall reeds round the edge. He raised himself up as much as possible, and looked eagerly over it.
“Wyn,” he cried, “there are all sorts of treasures on the opposite bank—real yellow loose-strife and rosebay willow herb. That’s not common cream and codlins. There’s none of it about elsewhere in the wood. And all sorts of flowering grass. Go round and get a great bunch of whatever you can see—I’ll wait here; give me the rein—but Dobbles knows his duty.”
Wyn ran off and plunged into the brushwood. He had been trained to have keen eyes, and he had soon collected a large bunch of reeds and flowers. Dobbles and his master were quite out of sight, and Wyn had got to the other side of the pond, among a mass of ferns and brambles not likely to yield much out of the common, when he heard a rustling and saw a tall man standing on the little track beyond him, with his back turned. Wyn was a keeper’s son, and as soon as he perceived that the man was a stranger he at once jumped to the conclusion that he was after no good, and that he, Mr Edgar’s only protector, had left him alone at some distance. And, though Mr Edgar was only game in the sense that nothing would frighten him, he had a watch and a purse, and was of course perfectly defenceless. As he prepared to hurry back to him the man turned, showing a sunburnt face and a long yellowish beard. He looked at Wyn.
“I say, boy, do you belong to these parts?” he said.
“Yes,” said Wyn, “do you? For this wood ain’t open to the public.”