"Swallows are charming," said Dr. Lilly, "but to see them at their best they should be on the wing. They are rather awkward-looking birds when not flying."
"They've got very nice faces," said Ferdy, who did not like to allow that his friends were short of beauty in any way. "Their foreheads and necks are such a pretty browny colour, and then their top feathers are a soft sort of blue, greyey blue, which looks so nice over the white underneath. I think they're awfully pretty altogether."
"You have watched them pretty closely, I see," said Dr. Lilly, pleased at Ferdy's careful noticing of his feathered neighbours. "I love swallows as much as you do, but it takes a master hand to carve movement. You may begin with something easier, and who knows what you may come to do in time."
Ferdy did not answer. He lay still, his blue eyes gazing up into the sky, from which at that moment they almost seemed to have borrowed their colour. Visions passed before his fancy of lovely things which he would have found it difficult to describe, carvings such as none but a fairy hand could fashion, of birds and flowers of beauty only to be seen in dreams—it was a delight just to think of them. And one stood out from the rest, a window like his own oriel window, but entwined with wonderful foliage, and in one corner a nest, with a bird still almost on the wing, poised on a branch hard by.
"Oh," and he all but spoke his fancy aloud, "I feel as if I could make it so lovely."
But just then, glancing downwards, though still out of doors, he gave a little start.
"It is him," he exclaimed. "Miss Lilly, dear, do look. Isn't that Jesse, standing at the gate?"
Yes, Jesse it was. Not peeping in shyly, as some boys would have done. That was not Mr. Jesse's way. No, there he stood, in the middle of the open gateway, quite at his ease, one hand in his pocket, in the fellow of which the other would have been, no doubt, if it had not been holding an inconvenient shape of parcel—a long narrow parcel done up in a bit of newspaper, which had seen better days; not the sort of parcel you could possibly hide in a pocket. It was tea-time at the farm, and Jesse had slipped down to the Watch House in hopes of catching sight of Miss Lilly, for she had spoken of the afternoon as the best time for seeing Ferdy.
"Of course it is Jesse," said the young lady. "Look, grandfather, don't you think I may run down and ask Mrs. Ross to let me bring him in for a few minutes?"
And off she went.