As it were in a pious surrender to the influence of the hour, he and the girl walked slowly, silently, by the wayside, busy with their own imaginings. They were all alone.
Beyond the Boshang Gate is an entrance to the policies, the parks, the gardens, of the Duke, standing open with a welcome, a trim roadway edged with bush and tree. Into it Nan and Gilian walked, almost heedless, it might seem, of each other’s presence, she plucking wild flowers as she went from bush to bush, humming the refrain of the fishers’ songs, he with his eyes wide open looking straight before him yet with some vague content to have her there for his companion.
When they spoke again they were in the cloistered wood, the sea hidden by the massive trees.
“I will show you my heron’s nest,” said Gilian, anxious to add to the riches the ramble would confer on her.
She was delighted. Gilian at school had the reputation of knowing the most wonderful things of the woods, and few were taken into his confidence.
He led her a little from the path to the base of a tall tree with its trunk for many yards up as bare as a pillar.
“There it is,” he said, pointing upward to a knot of gathered twigs swaying in the upper branches.
“Oh! is it so high as that?” she cried, with disappointment. “What is the use of showing me that? I cannot see the inside and the birds.”
“But there are no birds now,” said Gilian; “they are flown long ago. Still I’m sure you can easily fancy them there. I see them quite plainly. There are three eggs, green-blue like the sky up the glen, and now—now there are three grey hairy little birds with tufts on their heads. Do you not see their beaks opening?”
“Of course I don’t,” said Nan impatiently, straining her eyes for the tree-top. “If they are all flown how can I see them?”