As for runaway Dick from Guildford, who had been familiarised to rustic scenes from his earliest infancy, he could see no beauty in the various objects that each instant delighted the little Londoners’ eyes and ears; for, like the hero of Wordsworth’s verse, “the primrose by the river’s brim” was but a primrose and nothing more to him!
To Bob and Nellie, however, the scene around, with its salient features, disclosed a new world.
There were great, nodding, ox-eyed daisies that popped up pertly on either side, staring at them from amidst wastes of wild hyacinths and forget-me-nots that were bluer than Nellie’s witching eyes.
Pink and white convolvulus hung in festoons across the bracken-bordered little winding pathways that led here and there through mazes of shrubbery and undergrowth, under the arched wilderness of greenery above.
Rippling rivulets trickling down from nowhere and wandering whither their erratic wills directed, their soft, murmuring voices chiming in with the gayer carols of the birds.
Amongst these could be distinguished the harmonious notes of some not altogether unknown to them, the trill of the lark on high, the whistle of the blackbird in the hidden covert, the “pretty Dick” of the thrush, and the “chink, chink!” of the robin and coo of the dove, mingled with the sweet but subdued song of the yellow-hammer and sharp staccato accompaniment of the untiring chaffinch; while, all the time, a colony of asthmatic old rooks in the taller trees of the park cawed their part in the concert in a deep bass key at regular intervals, “Caw, caw, caw!”
Bob and Nellie were so delighted and unsparing of their admiration of everything they saw and heard, that Dick fell to wondering at the pleasure they took in things which he held of little account.
If unappreciative, however, Dick was of some service in telling Nellie the names of the principal wild-flowers; while he rose high in Bob’s estimation by his lore in the matter of birds’ nests, of which the ex-runaway from the country, naturally, could speak as an expert.
Touching the feathered tribe generally, he was able to tell them off at a glance, with the habits and characteristics of each, as readily as Bob could repeat the Multiplication Table—more so, indeed, if the strict truth be insisted on, without stretching a point!
“That be a throosh,” he would say; and, “t’other, over there’s, a chaffy. He ain’t up to much now; but wait till he be moulted and he’ll coom out foine! I’ve heard tell folks in furrin’ parts vallies ’em greatly, though we in Guildford think nowt of they. I’d rayther a lark mysen, Master Bob.”