“Of course not.”
“’Member me climbing the big elm at the bottom of the home-close to get the mag’s nest?”
“To be sure I do.”
“Didn’t think we two would ever go bird’s-nesting in Africa then, did we?”
“No; but do you think there is a nest out yonder, Joe?”
“I do,” cried Emson, “I’ve seen several hen birds about the last few days; but I never could make out which way they came or went. I’ve been on the lookout, too, for one rising from the ground.”
“But is this a likely place for a nest?”
“Well, isn’t it? I should say it’s the very spot. Now, just look: here we are in an open plain, where a bird can squat down in the sand and look around for twenty miles—if she can see so far—in every direction, and see danger coming, whether it’s a man, a lion, or a jackal, and shuffle off her nest, and make tracks long before whatever it is gets near enough to make out where she rose. Of course I don’t know whether we shall find the nest, if there is one. It’s hard enough to find a lark’s or a partridge’s nest at home in an open field of forty or fifty acres; so of course, big though the nest is, and the bird, it’s a deal harder, out in a field hundreds of miles square, eh?”
“Of course it is.”
“’Scuse my not looking round at you when I’m speaking, old chap; but if I take my eye off the spot, I shall never find it again.”