“Well, garden, sir. Why, there’s actooally ivy and other ’nockshus weeds growing all over ’em.”
“Well, it looks peaceful and nice.”
“Bah! A gun can’t look peaceful and nice. But that aren’t the worst of it, sir. I was along by ’em a bit ago, and, if you’ll believe me, when I put my hand in one, if there warn’t a sharp, hissing noise!”
“A snake? Got in there?”
“Snake, sir? No! I wouldn’t ha’ minded a snake; but there’s no snakes here.”
“There was one, Ben, for I brought it up out of the woods, and kept it in a box for months, till it got away. Then that’s where it is.”
“Nay. It were no snake, sir. It were one of them little blue and yaller tomtit chaps as lays such lots o’ eggs. I fetches a stick, and I was going to shove it in and twist it in the hay and stuff o’ the nest and draw it out.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No, sir, I didn’t; for I says to myself, if Sir Granby and her ladyship like the place to go to ruin, they may let it; and if the two little birds—there was a cock and hen—didn’t bring up twelve of the rummiest little, tiny young uns I ever did see. There they was, all a-sitting in a row along the gun, and it seemed to me so comic for ’em to be there that I bust out a-laughing quite loud.”
“And they all flew away?”