Page 27 - Fairbrass
P. 27
came back to get i t ; the darting* swifts, as
they swirled over the homestead,squealed out
their approval of the place ; the moorhens
loved to breast the rippling waters of the
brook; the nightingales had for many, many
generations been happy and undisturbed
tenants of the orchard ; and the grave and
glossy rooks cawed in solemn chorus from
the topmost boughs of the tall elm-trees
that formed its boundary.
And as he began to grow up, Fairbrass
knew the garden too. He loved it better
than any place In the world. In the house
everyone was kind to him—very kind indeed
—far kinder, as it seemed to him, than they
were to each other; but all seemed to regard
him with a sort of mournful pity that he
could not at all understand. When his
mother took him on her knee and pressed
him to her breast, he knew that, though she
tried to smile 011 him, it was through a mist
of tears, and that some intense grief quick
ened her heart-throbs ; he saw that even the
somewhat stern eyes of his father moistened