Bess was full of her verses and of her white costume, and old Nana, for all that she grumbled much at first, got stage-fever at last in her veins, and told me “that none would look as well as her blessed lamb, and seeing what the play was, and who made the dresses, and where the flowers grew, she held it to be all foolish, overgrown, mealy-mouthed righteousness on old Hester’s part to stick out so obstinate and audacious again’ a harmless bit of childer’s play.”
When I asked Burbidge if he and his men would get me some primroses and bunches of marsh marigolds, he was at first very wroth.
“Do yer take me for a loseller, marm?” he said, using the old country word for an idler. “Do yer think that I have nought to do, but to stump through wood and field, pulling blows for a May folly?”
But since the first outbreak he softened, and now he has begun to speak in a more kindly spirit, about fine primroses as grow above Homer steps, marsh marigolds as can be got near the Marsh Farm pool, and about cuckoo pint and bits of green fern, and I have little doubt that on May morning it will be found that my request has been granted.
Burbidge and Nana will always do what we want them, only give them time, as Bess says, for my little minx, young as she is, has long discovered that with old friends, and particularly old servants, there is often a great deal of bark, but happily not much bite.
One day it had been raining all the morning. Everything seemed growing. I could almost, as I looked out of the window, see the chestnut buds swelling, and the points of the yews were turning a reddish gold. Through a window I could hear the canaries singing, singing and filling the garden with melodious sounds. The sun had gently pierced the clouds at last, and here and there faint shades of delicate blue were to be seen.
Suddenly, as I sat by the window plying my needle and admiring the rain drops glistening like crystals in the grass, I saw my little friend, Thady, below on the gravel walk. “What, Thady, you here!” I cried; for Thady, to use his mother’s expression, was all himself again, bare-legged and as merry as a grig.
“BEGORRA, IT’S ME”
“Begorra, it’s me,” replied Thady, “me myself, and I’ve come to ask if yer will come a bird-nesting with me, some day?” And he added, with the courtesy that only can be found in an Irish imp, “’Twill be an honour and a pleasure to guide yer leddyship to the rarest nests in the country, and yer remember our talk some weeks ago?”
So, after a little parley, it was agreed that the following day, a Saturday, if fine, we would take our luncheon into the woods, and that Thady should climb the trees, as we had previously proposed.