“Well, we could pay the rent anyhow with what he offers,” said Stephen, as he put the letter in his pocket. “But to tell you the truth, Susan, I don’t much like the job. I’ve a tender feeling about those eggs.”
“Don’t like the job!” she cried, looking at him almost fiercely. “Why, what’s the matter with it? Look at these children—haven’t they as much right to be fed as young Kites?” And Stephen, looking on his young birds, felt a twinge at his heart, while the fledglings opened all their young mouths at once in a chorus of protest.
“It’s a bad trade,” he said at last: “I wish I had never taken it up. So long as I collected in foreign parts, it was all very well, and I was young and independent; but now I’m getting old, Susan, and the travellers won’t take me with them; and here in England there’s no price for anything but what’s a rarity—and rarities do me as much harm as good. I tell you, Susan, those Kite’s eggs last year were the very mischief: it got about that I had taken them, and my name’s in bad odour with the best naturalists. It’s those private collectors, with their clutches and their British-killed specimens that I have to live by now; and a precious set they are! What’ll they do with all their cabinets, I should like to know! Sell them to be scattered all over the place! Stow them away in a garret and forget all about them! Die some day, and have the public-house people picking ’em up cheap at your sale, to put in a glass case in the parlour! It’s infernal; I don’t like this job, Susan.”
Susan’s tears were beginning to run down. The sun had shone upon her for a moment, and then suddenly gone behind a cloud again. Two or three of the children, seeing their mother troubled, began to roar. Poor Stephen swallowed his tea, and fled from the confusion to his workshop, followed by his son.
“We must do this job, dad,” said Tom, when they were alone.
“I tell you I don’t like it, my lad,” said his father: “’tis bad for us in the long run, and bad for the Kites too. Your mother will say I am a fool; but there are not half a dozen pairs left in the kingdom, and I can’t go and persecute them for these private collectors. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about these things—extinction of birds, and all the rest of it: but the Kites are going sure enough, and I won’t have a hand in it.”
“We must do this job all the same, this year,” said Tom, “for the sake of the rent, and then let ’em alone. We must pay that rent, Kites or no Kites: and see what’s to be done next.”
“Well then,” said his father, “you must go without me. You know where to go. There’s no County Council order there against taking the eggs, but all the same, I hope you won’t find ’em. Don’t take a gun: I won’t have the old birds killed, for any collection, public or private.”
Great was the rejoicing in the family when Tom was found to be packing up. His mother gave him a few shillings from her scanty stock, and urged him to bring a bird as well as the eggs; but this Tom steadily refused to do. “Dad’s tender about it,” he said. “We only want the rent, and when that’s paid, I shall look out for another start in life.”
Stephen Lee sat down and wrote this letter to Mr. Gatherum, which next morning greatly astonished that young gentleman in London.