Page 98 - Fairbrass

a better day. It was early (so early that he
had secretly let himself out of the house

while all the others were sleeping) in the
morning of a lovely June ; the larks were

soaring and singing high in the sky before
taking* their final plummet-like drop into
the nests that held their listening mates ;

redstarts flashed across the roadways in

which the pied and yellow wagtails conse­
quentially strutted ; yellow-hammers piped
their persistent little tunes in the hedgerows,

accompanied by the ‘ clat-tat ’ of the busy
stonechats j and the noisy gossip of the jays

in the tree-tops was only half-drowned by
the caw of the flying rooks. But Fairbrass

was this morning bent on flower-picking,
and had no leisure for his friends the birds.

There had been a time when he thought it
cruel to pluck the beautiful living things,

but the flowers had all assured him that the
pain of being picked, with its accompanying

certainty of an early death, was amply
rewarded if it enabled them to fulfil their

mission, which is to give pleasure to human