“I say, don’t be so jolly particular, Joe,” cried Dyke, laughing.
“Why not? It’s just what you and I ought to be,” said the big fellow with simple earnestness. “We’re out here in a savage land, but we don’t want to grow into savages, nor yet to be as blunt and gruff as two bears. I’m not going to forget that the dear old governor at home is a gentleman, even if his sons do rough it out here.”
“Till they’re regular ruffians, Joe.—I say: see the nest?”
“Oh no; it’s a mile away yet.”
“Then there isn’t one. You couldn’t have seen it at all that distance.”
“I never said I could see the nest, did I? It was enough for me that I’ve seen the birds about, and that I caught sight of that one making off this morning. We call them stupid, and they are in some things; but they’re precious cunning in others.”
“But if they were only feeding?”
“Why, then, there’s no nest. But I say breeding, and not feeding; and that’s rhyme if you take it in time, as the old woman said.”
“But you talked about hen birds. Then there may be more than one nest?”
“Not here. Why, you know how a lot of them lay in the same nest.”