LITMIR.BIZ

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but he fluttered round and at last pecked violently at a crystal button on my coat; then I knew what he was after, and called out “sugar.” Bess echoed the cry, and darted off like a little fairy for some, finely pounded, in a scrap of paper from kind Auguste, who adores “toutes les bêtes de madame.” We had discovered rightly what it was that the Bourton Boy was in need of. He uttered a note of joy, and fell upon the sugar with a right good will directly we had placed it in the cage, whilst Bess watched him.

BOURTON BOY’S REQUEST

      “Why don’t you give him lettuce, too? Auguste offered me some salad,” she asked.

      “It is not good for canaries till the spring,” I replied. Then I went to the end of the shed to see if there was plenty of fat bacon hanging up – the birds’ cod liver oil, as old Nana calls it. I inspected a piece some three inches long and two wide. It was pecked all over by voracious little beaks, and was quite thin in places. Fat bacon is an excellent adjunct to an aviary, and is one of the best means of keeping birds in health, and of special value to hens during the nesting season. In winter, also, it seems to be very nourishing, and to give great gloss and lustre to their plumage. After seeing that their larder was well supplied, I turned to their baking-tin, full of red sand and very fine oyster grit. It is really astonishing, what an amount of grit all birds require to keep them in health. I poked up the contents of the tin with my walking-stick. It was amusing to watch the birds. In a moment all had left the seed, egg, or potato, and were engaged in picking up the freshly turned sand. A few months ago I was obliged to have the floor of the aviary firmly cemented down, as otherwise I found that mice burrowed from underneath and effected an entrance, and then attacked my pets. The cement in a few days hardened, and now is like a rock, and I am glad to say inroads from the furry little barbarians have become impossible.

      “My children of light,” as I call them, having been visited, I turned away and escaped with Bess out of the aviary, but not without great care, and having resource to some stratagems, for my little feathered friends all followed me closely, curious, and always hoping for fresh delights. At a given signal, Bess slipped under my arm, and we closed the door like lightning behind us.

      As we mounted the stairs, we saw the old gardener Burbidge waiting for us at the top. He looked like a picture of Old Time, with his grey hair, his worn brown overcoat, his long grey beard, and behind all, the background of snow.

      “They are all well,” I called out to him, “in spite of the cold.”

      “They was matted up yesterday,” answered the old man, pointing downwards to my pets. Then he went on to say how he and the gardeners strengthened the artificial hedge on the east side, by adding fir branches and some mats, “for it was fit to blow their feathers out, that mortal sharp was the eastwinder;” and Burbidge looked at my pets with indulgent pity, and added, “They be nesh folks, be canaries, for all they write about them.” Then he suspected Bess of giving them forbidden food. “They mustn’t have no green food. It be as bad for ’em as spring showers be for sucking gulleys” (goslings), he added, “and that be certain death.”

      “But I haven’t given them anything not allowed,” stammered out Bess, indignantly; “mama and I have only given them what we always do.”

      “Ah!” said Burbidge, softening, “that won’t be no hurt then; and as to potato and apple, they be the best quill revivers out, come winter. But what sort of apple was it?”

      I replied that the apple was a “Blenheim Orange” and no American.

“NO NEED OF FOREIGN STUFF”

      “No need of foreign stuff in Shropshire,” answered Burbidge, proudly. “Our late apples are as sound as if they were only fruited yesterday.”

      Then I told him that the potato was one of the same sort that I had last night at dinner – floury, sweet and mealy.

      “Then I’ll be bound,” he replied, “you had an Up-to-Dater, or may be a Sutton’s Abundance; they be both sound as a sovereign, real gold all through. No blotches or specks in they. We had four roods of both on the farm. Fresh land, no manure and a dusty summer, and tatters will take care of theirselves; but come a wet year, a field potato is worth two in a garden, although I says it as shouldn’t, but truth is truth, although you have to look up a black chimney to find it, as folks say.”

      Then old Burbidge went on to tell me how “Potatoes be right house wenches in a garden, or same as clouts to floors; but don’t you go to takin’ ’em from their nature too early, for when the tops bleed the tubers will never be fit for squire’s food, only fit for a petty tradesman’s table,” and this with Burbidge is always a dark, and outer land of disgrace.

      Bess, Burbidge and I paced along the neat swept paths. At last I got my word in. “No damage done by the snow?” I asked.

      “I don’t allow no damage,” was our old retainer’s stern reply; “leastways, not after daylight. I and lads were out again with poles this morning.”

      We wandered round the close-clipped yews, and peeped over into the borders beyond, while Burbidge talked of “how all had been put to bed” with pride. “Them as wants next year must mind this,” he exclaimed.

      All my tea-roses, Chinese peonies, and tender plants had been duly covered up with fern; and branches of spruce and Austrian fir had been carefully placed in front of my clematises Flammula, Montana, and Jackmanni, and round the posts on which my Crimson Rambler, jessamine, and vine ramped in summer.

      “They are just resting comfortable,” said Burbidge, complacently. “We all want sleep – plants and men – but let the plants have it suitable, same as childer in their beds.”

      We had come to the end of the red-walled garden, and as he said this, Burbidge opened the wrought-iron gate, and I passed down the flight of stairs which leads to the front drive.

      “To-morrow we must talk about the list of flowers,” I cried, before he was out of sight and hearing; “we must not forget the butter-beans, and the foreign golden lettuces.”

      Burbidge nodded, but not enthusiastically. He doesn’t what he calls “hold to foreign things.” England is his country, and, above all, Shropshire his county, but being very faithful, he is indulgent to my foibles. As Bess and I walked along the pathway, we lingered in the cloisters, and for a moment looked away at the far distance.

      We saw nothing but white fields which lay glittering in the sunshine, and the spire of the parish church to the west, which shone like a lance under the clear sky.

      “Some day,” Bess said, “take me right away, mamsie, far away with the dogs,” and she pointed to the snow-clad meadows that stretched round the old Abbey precincts. “I like fields,” she added, “better than gardens to walk in, for there are no ‘don’ts’ there for the dogs.”

A RUINED HEDGE

      This remark from Bess alluded to my dislike of broken hedges, for, as Burbidge says, “A yew hedge broken, is a kingdom ruined.” I remember this scathing remark was made on a terrible occasion when the great Mouse dashed through a yew hedge in hot pursuit of a very young rabbit, and indeed training down and replacing the broken limb of the yew was no slight matter. It was, in Burbidge’s phraseology, “a long and break-back job, bad as sorting sheep on the Long-Mynd in a snow-storm;” for, as our old gardener expressed it, “Nature be often full of quirks, and sometimes disobliging as a maiden aunt that’s got long in the tooth, and that walks snip-snappy, with an empty purse.”

      Ever since this mishap my great hound’s sporting habits have been, therefore, somewhat restricted in the Pleasaunce. But if things have gone wrong by evil chance, and large, very large, paw-marks can be detected on the beds, Burbidge is not without his passing sarcasm. “I prefer a bullock,” or “Big dogs be made for kennels,” he will say. I recalled these reminiscences of spring and summer days, but felt sure, for all he said, that Burbidge would never hurt a hair of my dog’s tail. Gradually the sunlight failed, and Bess and I went indoors. I found my friend Constance, of the Red House, awaiting my return.

      Her eye fell on my garden catalogues. “One wants in life many good ways of using common things,” she said; “a variety in fact, without the expense of change.” And then Constance agreed

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