Accordingly, early next morning the shepherd and his son were up at dawn, driving their sheep to the brook in which the sheep-washing took place. For some days previously, preparations had been made for this washing, which lasts two or three weeks, as all the sheep for miles round are brought to this spot. These preparations consisted of pens made of hurdles by the side of the river for the sheep; in the stream itself, opposite to each other, were erected two rough pulpits or deal boxes, in which stand the sheep-washers. When Jack and his father arrived, it was so early that no one was there, not even the washers; but at ten o’clock, when Mrs. Shelley and Fairy went, the scene was a most lively one.
Hundreds of sheep were in the pens, some white and clean, their agonies over; others still dirty, with their tortures to come. On the neighbouring bridge stood or leant every child in the village, thoroughly enjoying the sight. On the roadside were some stragglers of all grades, watching the performance, one or two farmers on horseback who had a lively interest in the washing of their flocks, and on the banks several shepherds, among them Jack and his father, all armed with large, toothless wooden rakes, with which they push the sheep about, holding them under water when necessary, and steering them from pulpit to pulpit.
What with the laughter and screams of delight from the children, the shouts of the shepherds, and the coughing of the sheep and jingling of their bells, the scene is a very noisy one; but, noisy as it is, Fairy thoroughly enjoys it, and declares she must stay till the last of John’s red-ringed flock are finished. It is such fun to see the poor sheep tumbled into the water and then rolled over on its back and rubbed from head to foot in the bright, clear stream, first by one washer in his pulpit, and then, after sundry pushes and thumps from the toothless rakes, to be seized by the other washer and subjected to another vigorous rubbing and scrubbing, and splashing and dashing, and finally to be pushed off to scramble or swim as best it might out of the river.
Poor, patient sheep! They take their sufferings in very good part, and submit meekly enough to the inevitable ordeal, basing a protest as feeble as it is useless, the older and wiser ones knowing that this washing is but a preliminary to the still more disagreeable ceremony of shearing to be performed a fortnight hence, as soon as the wool is dry. And Fairy, fascinated by the picturesque scene, could not be persuaded to move when Mrs. Shelley was forced to go home to prepare some dinner—a useless labour, Fairy declared, since there would be no one to eat it, for Charlie had taken his with him, and John and Jack were too busy to stop for dinner, and she herself was not hungry, and had no intention of going home till all John’s sheep were washed. But Mrs. Shelley had no idea of leaving a pretty young girl like Fairy alone among a crowd of people, so she proposed they should both go home and fetch some dinner and share it out in the field with John and Jack, a proposal Fairy jumped at; and an hour later the four were sitting on a bank under a hedge of blackthorn, with a carpet of buttercups and daisies at their feet, eating their simple meal as happy as it was possible for four people to be.
And then, while the shepherd smoked his pipe, Jack gave Fairy a lesson in the notes of the different birds which were singing around them, and Mrs. Shelley listened with pride to her eldest and darling son, and wondered whether Fairy would ever care for him in the way he evidently cared for her, and thought what a handsome couple they would make.
“Oh, Jack, how clever you are; you know everything; but there, I do know one thing—I am right this time at least—there is a skylark singing up over our heads. Look,” cried Fairy, who had been making various wrong guesses at the names of the different songsters around them.
“Poor little Fairy! you are wrong again; it is a woodlark; the skylark mounts up straight in a succession of springs, and then hovers, singing; the woodlark flies round and round in circles, singing all the while, as this bird is doing,” said Jack.
“Oh, I give it up; I know nothing; but as long as I have you to tell me, what does it matter? I shall go and look for a wheatear’s nest in that fence,” said Fairy, rising and shaking back her long golden hair, which she still wore down her back, and which added greatly to her childish appearance.
“My pretty one, wheatears don’t build in fences,” cried John Shelley, as she ran lightly past him.
“She is doing it on purpose; she knows as well as you and I wheatears build in rabbit-holes or chalk-pits; she only wants me to scold her,” said Jack.