"Look at that!" he said, as they suddenly came upon the mere, or
large pond. There was a small island in the middle of the glassy
water, on which grew tall trees, dark Scotch firs in the centre,
silvery shimmering willows close to the water's edge. "We must get
you punted over there, some of these days. I'm not fond of using the
boat at this time of the year, because the young birds are still in
the nests among the reeds and water-plants; but we'll go. There are
coots and grebes."
"Oh, look, there's a swan!"
"Yes; there are two pair of them here. And in those trees there's
both a rookery and a heronry; the herons ought to be here by now, for
they're off to the sea in August, but I've not seen one yet. Stay!
isn't that one--that fellow on a stone, with his long neck bent down,
looking into the water?"
"Yes! I think so. I have never seen a heron, only pictures of them."
"They and the rooks are always at war, which doesn't do for such near
neighbours. If both herons leave the nest they are building, the
rooks come and tear it to pieces; and once Roger showed me a long
straggling fellow of a heron, with a flight of rooks after him, with
no friendly purpose in their minds, I'll be bound. Roger knows a deal
of natural history, and finds out queer things sometimes. He'd have
been off a dozen times during this walk of ours, if he'd been here:
his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I
only see one. Why! I've known him bolt into a copse because he saw
something fifteen yards off--some plant, maybe, which he'd tell me
was very rare, though I should say I'd seen its marrow at every turn
in the woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this," touching
a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke,
"why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it
lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or
deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It's a pity
they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would
be safe enough if they did."
"Mr. Osborne Hamley is very clever, is he not?" Molly asked, timidly.
"Oh, yes. Osborne's a bit of a genius. His mother looks for great
things from Osborne. I'm rather proud of him myself. He'll get a
Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair. As I was saying at the
magistrates' meeting yesterday, 'I've got a son who will make a noise
at Cambridge, or I'm very much mistaken.' Now, isn't it a queer quip
of Nature," continued the squire, turning his honest face towards
Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, "that I, a
Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows where--the
Heptarchy, they say--What's the date of the Heptarchy?"