“These nuts are for your dessert, mother,” he continued, holding out the hazel branch in triumph.
“It is very good of my little boy to think of mamma,” said his mother. “Isn’t it, Barlow?” she said, turning to that rather exhausted person, who now came slowly up.
Nurse Barlow had not had a happy afternoon. She had been toiling through the lanes after Willie and his papa. The lanes were muddy, they had gone a long way, and she was very tired. She had made up her mind that the mushrooms were toadstools. It is true that they had come from a meadow in the neighbourhood where excellent mushrooms were wont to grow, but all the same, she was fully persuaded that these particular ones were toadstools, “just such as my poor sister’s little boy nearly died of eating.”
Then again Master Willie had eaten “pounds of blackberries, let alone those nasty nuts.”
It turned out that Nurse Barlow’s fears were happily 81 unfounded, for Willie’s papa had forbidden the consumption of nuts and limited the quantity of blackberries.
Notwithstanding these assurances, “Nanny” refused to be comforted, and as she tucked Willie in his little bed, she soothingly remarked, “A nice lot of physic I shall have to give you. Then you’ll have to stay indoors, and you’ll both be very cross and very tiresome; I know what it will be.”
That night Willie’s dreams were troubled, but they were mingled with a deep bliss notwithstanding. He seemed to be wandering through endless lanes where thousands of ripe and gigantic blackberries grew on all sides,––they actually seemed to bend forward and drop into his basket as he passed. Hazel-nuts were there also, of a marvellous size, and very brown and sweet, browner and sweeter than any he ever remembered to have eaten. He passed from the lanes into a field, where the mushrooms grew so thickly, that it was difficult to avoid treading on them as he walked. What greatly added to the delights of the expedition was the fact that all the time the Blackbird hopped by his side. He, too, seemed to have grown larger, and he was wonderfully tame, and allowed Willie to stroke his glossy head and back. Arrived at the end 82 of the meadow, however, Willie seemed somehow to pass into another lane, and there on the hedgerows instead of blackberries hung curious-looking bottles, and they were all labelled “Mr. Phil Viall, Chemist and Druggist.”
Alas! poor Willie, he knew those bottles far too well. Some of them were yellow and others were white, while a few were dreadfully black. “Nanny,” grown very tall indeed, marched before him down the lane, pointing sternly to each bottle as she passed.
At this moment Willie awoke, and was very glad to find that after all it was only a dream, that the bright morning sun was streaming through the white dimity curtains, and that he did not feel one bit the worse for yesterday’s expedition.
A few days passed away, and the Blackbird found that all that the Rook had told him was strictly true, for before long an evening arrived when a great many swallows began to congregate; then after a good deal of twittering and excitement they took wing, and flew steadily away towards the setting sun. The next morning the Blackbird sadly missed the twitter of his small friends. No little glossy dark heads were to be seen peeping out of the clay-built nests under the eaves, 83 and no white-breasted flyers skimmed the lawn. Yes, the swallows were indeed gone, and the Blackbird sadly realised the fact that the summer and its singers were gone too, left far behind in the months of long ago.