CHAPTER XVII.
ON THE LOCH.
"Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
And waits to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God."—Anon.
The months went by, and Marjory and Blanche were happy together. They watched the spring change to summer, and the summer to autumn, with the greatest delight. It was the first time that Blanche had seen the delicate shoots of the snowdrops and crocuses bravely pushing their way through the hard earth, the first time that she had been able to watch the miracle of seed and leaf and flower, and to trace the life of the young birds from their hatching to their flying from the nest. These were annual pleasures to Marjory, but they were much increased by the sweetness of Blanche's companionship. How she delighted in showing her friend where the first bluebells would be found in the wood, and in taking her to search in the most likely places for birds' nests! In one of these searches they found a great treasure. They were walking by the loch, when, amongst the reeds which grew along the water's edge they saw a reed-warbler's nest. What an ingenious construction it was—long and deep and pointed, woven between the reeds, and so firmly fixed and of such a shape that the eggs could not be shaken out, even by the roughest of winds. Marjory was very anxious that Blanche should see a pewit's nest. There were always a certain number of these birds about the moors, and the girls spent a whole morning searching for a nest. But these birds hide their nests so carefully that they are most difficult to find. After much patience and walking up and down over the same ground, causing great uneasiness to the parent birds who circled overhead, crying mournfully, they at last discovered a nest. It was just a little hollow in the ground with some grass in it, and there were the eggs, four of them, so wonderfully speckled that they matched the colour of the ground, and laid so neatly in an almost perfect circle, the large ends outwards and the very narrowly-pointed ones meeting in the centre.
"Oh," cried Blanche, "I've seen eggs like these in London shops; they call them plovers' eggs, and people eat them at dinner-parties."
"What a shame!" said Marjory indignantly.
"Well, you eat hens' eggs," argued Blanche.
"But they're quite different. Somebody feeds them every day, and they don't even have to make their own nests; and then, when they do lay an egg, they make a great noise to let everybody know about it. But these dear birds do it all themselves, and they take such trouble to hide their eggs, and are so worried if they think any one is too near them. Oh, I simply couldn't eat a plover's egg."