As I stood there idly contemplating the sawn-off half of a prostrate trunk, my attention was attracted to a couple of small, ragged, shrill-voiced urchins, dancing round the wood and trying to get bits of bark and splinters off, one with a broken chopper for an implement, the other with a small hand-hatchet, which flew off the handle at every stroke. Seeing that I was observing their antics, one shouted to the other, ‘Say, Bill, got a penny?’ ‘No, don’t I wish I had!’ shouted the other.
‘Little beggars,’ thought I, ‘do you really imagine you are going to get a penny out of me?’ So much amused was I at their transparent device that I deliberately winked an eye—not at the urchins, but for the benefit of a carelessly dressed, idle-looking young woman who happened to be standing near just then, regarding us with an expression of slight interest, a slight smile on her rosy lips, the sunshine resting on her beautiful sun-browned face, and tawny bronzed hair. I must explain that I had met her before, often and often, in London and other towns, and in the country, and by the sea, and on distant seas, and in many uninhabited places, so that we were old friends and quite familiar.
Presently an exceedingly wasted, miserable-looking, decrepid old woman came by, bent almost double under a ragged shawl full of sticks and brushwood which she had gathered where the men were now engaged in lopping off the branches of a tree they had just felled. ‘My! she’s got a load, ain’t she, Bill?’ cried the first urchin again. ‘Oh, if we had a penny, now!’
I asked him what he meant, and very readily and volubly he explained that on payment of a penny the workmen would allow any person to take away as much of the waste wood as he could carry, but without the penny not a chip. I relented at that and gave them a penny, and with a whoop of joy at their success they ran off to where the men were working.
Then I turned to leave the gardens, nodding a good-bye to the young woman, who was still standing there. The slight smile and expression of slight interest, that curious baffling expression with which she regards all our actions, from the smallest to the greatest, came back to her lips and face. But as she returned my glance with her sunny eyes, behind the sunniness on the surface there was a look of deep meaning, such as I have occasionally seen in them before. It seemed to be saying sorrowful and yet comforting things to me, telling me not to grieve overmuch at these hackings and mutilations of the sweet places of the earth—at these losses to be made good. It was as if she had shown me a vision of some far time, after this London, after the dust of all her people, from park ranger to bowed-down withered old woman gathering rotten rain-sodden sticks for fuel, had been blown about by the winds of many centuries—a vision of old trees growing again on this desecrated spot as in past ages, oak and elm, and beech and chestnut, the happy, green homes of squirrel and bird and bee. It was very sweet to see London beautified and made healthy at last! And I thought, quoting Hafiz, that after a thousand years my bones would be filled with gladness, and, uprising, dance in the sepulchre.
CHAPTER VI
RECENT COLONISTS
The wood-pigeon in Kensington Gardens—Its increase—Its beauty and charm—Perching on Shakespeare’s statue in Leicester Square—Change of habits—The moorhen—Its appearance and habits—An æsthetic bird—Its increase—The dabchick in London—Its increase—Appearance and habits—At Clissold Park—The stock-dove in London.