"Here, Piers."
Then the quick, even thud of crutches, and Piers came in sight.
In a moment Joyce was springing down the grassy hill-side, and, with a hardly perceptible touch on her brother's shoulder, she joined him as he came up.
"I say, Joyce, if you go to Wells to-day with father, will you take this little sparrow-hawk to old Plume's to be stuffed? Here, rummage in my pocket, left-hand side—there he is! He is a perfect specimen, and a pretty rare one. The stable-boy found him lying on his back under the dove-cot. Perhaps he got the worst of it in a fight. Anyhow, he is dead, and I have a nice nook for him in my big case."
"Poor dear little birdie," Joyce said, stroking the soft feathers. "Oh! Piers, why must everything die? It seems so hard. And this is the puzzle, that we—you and I—may die to-day, next week, any day; and yet we don't really behave as if we believed it. I feel on a morning like this, for instance, so full of life, it is so delicious to live, and as if I never could die. It is so beautiful to be living, so sad to be dead! To think, Piers, of this little bird singing sweetly——"
"Sparrow-hawks don't sing very sweetly; they chirrup and whistle," Piers interrupted.
"Ah, well, he thought he sang sweetly, and so did his mother; so it came to the same thing. Poor little sweet." And Joyce held the little lifeless bird against her rounded chin and pressed her lips upon it.
Suddenly Piers said:
"What is wrong about Melville; there's something fresh, for I heard my mother talking about it before I was up."
"He says he won't come here and take care of the farm. He wants to travel."