“You are a very queer boy,” said Kitty. “Birds and squirrels and forest trees, when you might be hearing about delicious frosted cake and jam rolly-polies. Well, take my hand and let’s run into the forest; let’s get it over, if we must get it over. I’ll take you down to the Avon to fish to-morrow. I like fishing—don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Phil. “I like nearly everything. Do you fish with flies or bait?”
“Oh, with horrid bait! that is the worst of it; but I generally get Robert—one of our grooms—to bait my lines.”
The children were now under the shade of the trees, and Kitty, after running about until she was tired, climbed into one of the branches of a wide-spreading beech tree and rocked herself in a very contented manner backward and forward. Phil was certainly a very queer little boy, but she was quite convinced he must be her real true cousin, that he was not a make-believe, that he would stay on at Avonsyde as the heir, and that she would always have a companion of her own age to play with.
“He will get tired of the forest by and by,” she said to herself, “and then he will like best to play with me, and we can fish all day together. How jolly that will be! What a good thing it is that he is so nearly my own age, and that he is not older; for if he were he would go every where with Rachel and be her friend. I should not like that at all,” concluded the little girl, with a very selfish though natural sigh of satisfaction.
Presently Phil—having wandered about to his heart’s content, having ascertained the color of several birds which sang over his head, having treasured up the peculiar quality of their different notes, and having ascertained beyond all doubt that the English forest was quite the quaintest and most lovely place in the world—came back and climbed into the tree by Kitty’s side.
“I’d like him to see it awfully,” he said.
“Who, Phil?”
“I can’t tell you—that’s my secret. Kitty, you’ll never find that I shall get accustomed to the forest—I mean so accustomed that I shan’t want to come here. Oh, never, never! A place like this must always have something new to show you. Kitty, can you imitate all the birds’ notes yet?”
“I can’t imitate one of them,” said Kitty, with an impatient frown coming between her eyebrows.