“No; but I wish she was not hereabouts: that is, I wish she had not come up to the pales, with the maid-servant behind her, for everybody to see. And then, when Mr Tooke sent us into the orchard together, some spies were peeping over the wall at us all the time.”
“I only wish Agnes would come,” cried Hugh, “and I would—”
“Ah! You think so now; but depend upon it, you would like much better to see her at home. Why, her name is finer than my sister’s! I wonder what girls ever have such names for!”
“I don’t see that these names are finer than some boys’ names. There’s Frazer, is not his name Colin? And then there’s Hercules Fisticuff—”
“Why, you know—to be sure you know that is a nick-name?” said Dale.
“Is it? I never thought of that,” replied Hugh. “What is his real name?”
“Samuel Jones. However, there is Colin Frazer—and Fry, his name is Augustus Adolphus; I will play them off the next time they quiz Amelia. How old is your sister Agnes?”
Then the two boys wandered off among the furze bushes, talking about their homes; and in a little while they had so opened their hearts to each other, that they felt as if they had always been friends. Nobody thought any more about them when once the whole school was dispersed over the heath. Some boys made for a hazel copse, some way beyond the heath, in hopes of finding a few nuts already ripe. Others had boats to float on the pond. A large number played leap-frog, and some ran races. Mr Carnaby threw himself down on a soft couch of wild thyme, on a rising ground, and took out his book. So Dale and Hugh felt themselves unobserved, and they chatted away at a great rate. Not but that an interruption or two did occur. They fell in with a flock of geese, and Hugh did not much like their appearance, never having heard a goose make a noise before. He had eaten roast goose, and he had seen geese in the feathers at the poulterers’; but he had never seen them alive, and stretching their necks at passengers. He flinched at the first moment. Dale, who never imagined that a boy who was not afraid of his schoolfellows could be afraid of geese, luckily mistook the movement, and said, “Ay, get a switch,—a bunch of furze will do, and we will be rid of the noisy things.”
He drove them away, and Hugh had now learned, for ever, how much noise geese can make, and how little they are to be feared.
They soon came upon some creatures which were larger and stronger, and with which Hugh was no better acquainted. Some cows were grazing, or had been grazing, till a party of boys came up. They were now restless, moving uneasily about, so that Dale himself hesitated for a moment which way to go. Lamb was near,—the passionate boy, who was nobody’s friend, and who was therefore seldom at play with others. He was also something of a coward, as any one might know from his frequent bullying. He and Holt happened to be together at this time; and it was their appearance of fright at the restless cows which frightened Hugh. One cow at last began to trot towards them at a pretty good rate. Lamb ran off to the right, and the two little boys after him, though Dale pulled at Hugh’s hand to make him stand still, as Dale chose to do himself. He pulled in vain—Hugh burst away, and off went the three boys, over the hillocks and through the furze, the cow trotting at some distance behind. They did not pause till Lamb had led them off the heath into a deep lane, different from the one by which they had come. The cow stopped at a patch of green grass, just at the entrance of the hollow way; and the runners therefore could take breath.