"Well, sir, I suppose you are going to give me a present of some sort as usual, and I thought, if you don't mind, that I should like to choose my present this time for myself."
"If you choose wisely, you shall have what you wish, Frank."
"Well, sir, all that I want is that you should let me have one of the straight young larches by the Broad. I want to cut it down at once that it may season by the spring."
"It is rather a strange birthday present, Frank, but you may have it, in addition to the one your mother and I were about to get you, which was Morris's British Birds."
"Oh, father, I am so glad. That is just the book I have been wanting."
Mr. Merivale did not ask his son what the larch-tree was for. He thought that if Frank wished him to know he would have told him at once. He had a most perfect trust in his children, and he delighted to let them see that he had this trust in them. Hence it was their pride to deserve the confidence placed in them, and a happier family was not to be found in all Norfolk. Mr. Merivale supposed his son had good reasons for not making him a confidant in the matter of the larch-tree, so forbore to ask him.
Frank quickly made his way to the outbuildings, where he obtained a couple of axes and a long rope. Laden with these he set off along a thickly-hedged lane until he came to a cottage, set far back in an old-fashioned garden. Here lived Jimmy Brett, his great friend, a boy about the same age as himself, who lived with his grandmother, Mrs. Brett, in this quiet little cottage. As Frank went up the garden walk he saw Jimmy perched on a ladder, engaged in painting a long board, a foot wide, which he had fixed up the whole length of the front of the cottage, just below the bed-room window.
"What on earth is that for, Jimmy?" cried Frank, in astonishment.
Jimmy turned round, revealing himself as a slight, pale-faced lad, with an eager and intelligent countenance, and replied—
"Well, you see, the swallows build in such great numbers in these wide old-fashioned eaves that they are rather a nuisance, and grandmother does not like the mess they make of the door-steps and windows below, so I thought if I put a board all the way along beneath their nests it would do away with the nuisance."