He was full of good-humour, for he had been over to the beech copse, and the mast, he told us, was the finest crop he had seen for years. We must collect a good store as soon as it got ripe.
But he suddenly noticed that mother was quivering all over, and he had not time to ask what had upset her before she burst into an account of all the dreadful things that had happened that morning.
Then he looked very grave.
‘We must go,’ he said. ‘It means building a new house. And this tree has suited us so admirably. I do not think that I have ever seen a weasel near it; then, too, we are so capitally sheltered from bad weather by all these thick evergreens. In any case I shall not leave the plantation, but I suppose we must look out for another tree. We cannot do anything to-day; it is too late. Now I will mount guard over the youngsters while you go and get some dinner.’
And rather uneasily she went off.
The heat of the day was over, but the sun was still warm. A little breeze was talking gently up in the murmurous tops of the trees, causing the shadows to sway and dance in dappled lights on the lower branches. You humans, who never go anywhere without stamping, and running, and talking loudly, and lighting pipes with crackly matches, have no idea what the real life of the woods is like, especially on a fine June afternoon such as this one was. Though our larch was one of a thick clump, yet from the great height of our nest we could see right across into the belt of oaks, beeches, and old thorn-trees which lay along the slope below, and could even catch a glimpse of the tall hedge and bank, and of the sandy turf beyond where the rabbit-warren lay.
One by one the rabbits lopped silently out of their burrows and began to feed till the close turf was almost as brown as green. Stupid fellows, rabbits, I always think, but I like to watch them, especially when the young ones play, jumping over and over one another, or when some old buck, with a sudden idea that a fox or weasel is on the prowl, whacks the ground with one hind-leg, and then all scuttle helter-skelter back into their holes.
A pompous old cock pheasant came strutting down a ride in the young bracken, the sun shining full on his glossy plumage and black-barred tail. Presently his wife followed him, and behind her came a dozen chicks flitting noiselessly over the ground like so many small brown shadows. A pair of wood-pigeons were raising their second brood in a fir-tree, not far away from where we lived, and every now and then, with a rapid clatter of wings, one of the old birds came flapping through the aisles of the plantation with food for their two ugly, half-fledged young ones. I wonder, by the by, why a wood-pigeon is so amazingly careless about its nest building. I never can understand how it is that the young ones do not fall off the rough platform of sticks which is their apology for a nest. And it must be shockingly cold and draughty, too. Birds are supposed to be ahead of all other nest-builders, but I can tell you there are a good many besides the wood-pigeon who might take a few pointers in architecture from us squirrels, to say nothing of our distant cousin the door-mouse.
A sharp rat-a-tat just behind startled me, and there was a big green woodpecker hanging on tight against the trunk of our own larch with his strong claws, and pounding the bark with his hammer-like beak. Father looked at him with interest.
‘Ah,’ he observed, ‘it’s about time we did move. The old tree must be getting rotten, or we shouldn’t have a visit from him.’