“Let the poor thing be,” I cried, and, thrusting a piece of stick under the worm, I sent it flying amongst the wet grass.
“Ugh! you cruel wretch!” cried Mercer.
“Come, that’s nice,” I said. “Better than letting you put it in a box, and carrying it in your hot pocket to kill.”
“I shouldn’t kill it, I should keep it in a pot of earth.”
“Which would dry up, and the poor thing would crawl out and be trodden upon. Come along.”
But he would not come along, for Tom Mercer was a true naturalist at heart, and found interest in hundreds of things I should have passed over. For instance, that morning, as we strolled a little way along the lane, we stopped to peer over the gate into a newly ploughed field at some round-looking birds which rose directly with a loud whirr, and then went skimming along, to glide over the hedge at the bottom and disappear.
“Partridges,” cried Mercer. “Daresay they’ve got a nest somewhere not far from here. Oh, I do wish we had bought Magglin’s gun. It is such a handy one. You see we could keep it up in the loft, and take it to pieces and bring it out without any one knowing, and shoot our own birds to stuff.”
“Mustn’t shoot partridges. They’re game,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “We shouldn’t want them to eat, only to stuff, and— Hallo, look there! I haven’t found one of those for ever so long.”
He climbed over the gate, and picked up something cream-coloured from the hollow between two furrows.