And he pulled out a well-thumbed handbook, and pointed to a cut of the grasshopper warbler.
'Whereabouts?' asked Robert, wondering the while at his own start of interest.
'In that bit of common t'other side the big pond,' said Ned, pointing, his brick-red countenance kindling into suppressed excitement.
'Come and show me!' said the rector, and the two went off together. And sure enough, after a little beating about, they heard the note which had roused the lad's curiosity, the loud whirr of a creature that should have been a grasshopper, and was not.
They stalked the bird a few yards, stooping and crouching, Robert's eager hand on the boy's arm, whenever the clumsy rustic movements made too much noise among the underwood. They watched it uttering its jarring imitative note on bush after bush, just dropping to the ground as they came near, and flitting a yard or two farther, but otherwise showing no sign of alarm at their presence. Then suddenly the impulse which had been leading him on died in the rector. He stood upright, with a long sigh.
'I must go home, Ned,' he said abruptly. 'Where are you off to?'
'Please, sir, there's my sister at the cottage, her as married Jim, the under-keeper. I be going there for my tea.'
'Come along, then, we can go together.'
They trudged along in silence; presently Robert turned on his companion.
'Ned, this natural history has been a fine thing for you, my lad; mind you stick to it. That and good work will make a man of you. When I go away——'