Looking in—as we are permitted to do—at the chamber-window of Basil, we find him assorting friends and companions for his future home. Though a wild sportive lad—bouncing through the early chapters of this veracious history,—he was so deeply touched by his love of Bessy; so suddenly pulled up to a serious contemplation of the world, by the strange events of his family,—that, after a brief pause, he sprang, as at a bound, to a nobler, higher view of human dealings. Hence, he had soon gathered some glorious books. A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend. A book—the unfailing Damon to his loving Pythias. A book that—at a touch—pours its heart into our own.
And some of these friends, with looks that may not alter, with tones that cannot change,—Basil set apart for his companions in the wilds. As he chose them one by one—for some must remain behind, he might not take them all—he looked gravely down upon them; with almost a tenderness of touch laid them aside,—his fellow-voyagers. Some twoscore were selected; special friends. There they lay; motionless and dumb. And yet the chamber was filled with lovely presences; was sounding with spiritual voices: the beautiful and mighty populace, evoked by the memory of the living friend—the friend in the flesh, the companion and the scholar of the souls of the dead.
And this was Basil’s last employment, the day before his bridal. He marshalled a magnificent array of friends to bear him company in the wilderness. He carried with him an invisible host of bright spirits; spirits of every kind and degree; and all friends—sound friends;—of friendship made in solitude; and without patch or lacker, lasting to the grave.
Five minutes, reader; and your company to the once decent lodging—now turned topsy-turvy—of Mr. and Mrs. Topps. They, too, are in the very fury of packing-up. Or rather, Mrs. Topps and two or three friends. For Robert and his father-in-law—Goodman White, late and future schoolmaster—remain passively in the way; both of them discussing the apparent merits of some score of young rooks; that Bob, on his own account, and as a special offering to his old master Carraways, had with some difficulty and danger, kidnapped from the high-top elms that surround Jogtrot Hall. Bob, in his snatch of reading, had learned that rooks were at the Antipodes precious as birds of paradise. He had therefore obtained some twenty nestlings, “very sarcy upon their legs, indeed.” They would be worth their weight in gold, he declared to his father-in-law, to pick up the worms and the grubs.
“It’s a capital thing for a bird or a brute,” said Bob, “to be born to be of some use. Eh?” The schoolmaster assented. “Now, I shouldn’t have liked to be born a magpie—or a weasel; it’s like being born a thief”—
“I doubt, aye, I more than doubt whether anybody’s born a thief,” said White.
“I’m not a scholar,—that is, compared to you; I can’t say. But a rook is a serviceable cretur; he earns his living; and nobody can’t grudge it him. They are precious hearty, arn’t they,” and Bob, with an eye of pride surveyed the nestlings. “There’s only one thing that I’m sorry about: but it’s impossible—and this it is; I am only sorry we couldn’t take the trees from the Hall, too.”
“Ha! We shall find trees enough, there,” said White, intent upon the birds. “Well, they are strong!”