‘’Tis White-Eye agen—a fine yow, but a onaccountable bad mother, ’a be, surelye. Purty nigh lost her lamb laast season, an’ now agen ’tis ne’ersome-matter wi’ un. Wunt gie suck. Butts th’ little un away, ’a do. That, an’ th’ could, ’tis. Terr’ble hard put to ’t, I wur, laast time, to save un! An’ this—well: if ’a cooms round, ’twill be a miracle—’
He stopped to fetch his breath, then set to more vigorously than ever.
‘Lorsh! I do b’lieve! . . . Ay! I’ll do ’t!—better ’n a score o’ dead uns, ’a be, a’ready. Now, shaap wi’ th’ bottle!’
But the wretched mute morsel of woolliness was too weak to suck. And then George Artlett did what I had never seen done before.
‘Well, well!’ he said confidently, ‘we must try th’ ould-fangled way wi’ un!’ He took a gulp of the warm milk, and bringing the lamb’s mouth to his own, tenderly fed it. Again and again this was done, until life began to flicker up strong once more in the little creature’s body.
‘But mind ye!’ said George, as presently he stood looking down on the resuscitated lamb, and regaling himself with its pitiful bleating, ‘No more o’ White-Eye! Off to Findon Fair ’a goos wi’ th’ draught-sheep next May, sure as she’s alive!’
MARCH
I
The charm of Sussex woods, though you may frequent them at all times in and out of season, is that they are never the same woods from year to year. The great trees, indeed, keep their old familiar forms and stations, but the undergrowth of hazel, ash, larch, or silver-birch is periodically cleared away. This year, a certain hillside or deep hollow may be hidden under a thicket of growth impenetrable not only to the casual wanderer, but to the very sunlight itself; and next year the wood-cutters may have swept it clean, leaving only the forest trees to cast their shadows over a sunny wilderness that your eyes, though you have journeyed this way scores of times, have never yet beheld. Clearings wherein the children gathered primroses by the thousand one spring, are overgrown and all but impassable the next. The very paths and waggon-ways change their direction, as the woodmen vary the scene of their labours from year to year. And in the track of the copse-cutters, arise all manner of new plants; new birds come to nest; new sights and sounds throng about the way at every turn—so, in nearly all seasons, a strange new land is brought to your very feet, in the midst of things familiar, maybe, for a score of years.
In the dead deeps of winter, nothing seems so remote, so hopelessly unattainable, as the March sunshine; yet here it is at last, and here I am, sitting on a hazel-stole softly cushioned with ivy, alone and deliciously idle, in a clearing I have just discovered in the heart of Windle Woods.