“Oh, don’t! I’ll never do so no more. Oh, please! Oh, I say! It hurts!—You, Master Syd?”
“Yes; who did you think it was?”
“My father with the rope’s-end and—oh, I say, I am so stiff and sore, and—have you got anything to eat?”
Sydney shook his head despondingly.
“I was waking you up to come and try and find some.”
“There’s lots o’ rabbits about here,” grumbled Pan, “if we could catch some.”
“Yes, and hares too, Pan, if we had a good gun. Come along.”
They rambled along by the stream, finding before long a blackthorn laden with sloes, of which Pan ate two, and Sydney contented himself with half of one. Then they were voted a failure, and the blackberries growing in a sunny, open spot were tried with no better result.
At the end of another quarter of an hour a clump of hazel stubs came in view—fine old nut-bearers, with thickly mossed stumps, among which grew clusters of light golden buff fungi looking like cups; but though these were good for food, in the eyes of the boys they were simply toadstools, and passed over for the sake of the fringed nuts which hung in twos and threes, even here and there in fours and fives.
It did not take long to get a capful of these, and they soon sat down to make their al fresco meal.