Once in the earlier hours of their friendship, it being then, I fancy, not eight days old, the two had fallen in with an aged shepherd, one blowy evening of sleet and rain. Together they had gone a-lambing with him, scouring the darkling fields for the scattered ewes, their ears alert to the cry of the new-born lambs. Here Peregrine had been the surest guide, the quickest to catch the cry of the life new-born. Once started on their work they had remained at it throughout the night. By good fortune rather than good management their absence from the Castle went undetected; yet it was a matter not to be repeated, since the next day Pippo’s eyes were heavy with sleep, his brain too drowsy for his duties, whereby he incurred, and not unnaturally, his mistress’s displeasure. The arduous task consolidated their friendship. It was a friendship wherein, if there was unbounded admiration on the boy’s side, there was something very akin to gratitude on the man’s.
Yet the greatest wonder of all in Pippo’s eyes was the way of Peregrine with the wild creatures of wood and field. To see the birds come at his call, perch on hand and shoulder, sing therefrom as from a very post of vantage, to watch the dormice, the squirrels awakened from their winter sleep come fearlessly up to him, this indeed was marvel, and marvel to be held in secret bond between them. There was half the joy of it. None but they two knew of their sweet intimacy with Nature’s special creatures, those on whom no man had laid the lightest touch of civilization.
Peregrine, too, was a wonderful raconteur of tales, ofttimes in verse, ever bathed in fancy. He could translate to the boy’s enraptured ears the song the thrush sang to his mate in the golden morning hours, the secrets whispered by the wind as it moved among the fir trees, or through the rushes by the margin of some brook,—very children both of them in mind, with hearts as young as the sweet springtime around them.
One April evening the two sat together on a grassy hillside. Behind them was a copse of hollies, firs, and beeches, a copse of deep undergrowth and green moss. On its margin stood a cherry tree, the wealth of its snowy blossoms backgrounded by a holly bush. Pippo had robbed the tree of a portion of its wealth. It lay beside him in long graceful boughs burdened with white flowers and tender pink-brown leaves. To the left on the southern slope of the hill were massed primroses, and early bluebells, pushing forth among spiked leaves. Scattered at their feet and adown the grassy hill were cuckoo-flowers, their tiny petals most faintly tinged with pinkish purple. Before them lay the channel, blue in the luminous haze which hung over land and water.
“The swallows have returned,” quoth Peregrine, as propped on elbow he gazed out to sea.
“Where?” demanded Pippo staring around him.
“They are not here at the moment,” laughed Peregrine. “I saw them this morning from my chamber window passing in flocks across the sky.”
“Ah!” breathed Pippo envious. “I would that I had seen them.”
“Thou wert sleeping, young lazy bones,” teased Peregrine.