“Oh, little boy,” he said, rubbing his eyes and springing to his feet, “what a wicked, wicked little boy you are! You have been snaring a pheasant!”
The small boy, who was about his age, looked frightened and penitent: he saw his accuser was a little gentleman.
“Please, sir, don’t tell on me,” he said, with a whimper. “I’ll gie ye the bird if ye won’t tell on me.”
“I do not want the bird,” said Bertie, with magisterial gravity. “You are a wicked little boy to offer it to me. It is not your own, and you have killed it. You are a thief!”
“Please, sir,” whimpered the little poacher, “dad allus tooked ’em like this.”
“Then he is a thief too,” said Bertie.
“He was a good un to me,” said the small boy, and then fairly burst out sobbing. “He was a good un to me, and he’s dead a year come Lady-day, and mother she’s main bad, and little Susie’s got the croup, and there’s nowt to eat to home; and I hear Susie cryin’, cryin’, cryin’, and so I gae to cupboard where dad’s old tackle be kep, and I gits out this here, and says I to myself, maybe I’ll git one of them birds i’ spinney, ’cos they make rare broth, and we had a many on ’em when dad was alive, and Towser.”
“Who was Towser?”
“He was our lurcher; keeper shot him; he’d bring of ’em in his mouth like a Chrisen; and gin ye’ll tell on me, they’ll clap me in prison like they did dad, and it’s birch rods they’d give yer, and mother’s nowt but me.”
“I do not know who owns this property,” said Bertie, in his little sedate way, “so I could not tell the owner, and I should not wish to do it if I could; but still it is a very wicked thing to snare birds at all, and when they are game-birds it is robbery.”