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"We sometimes catch twenty tomtits before breakfast," said a modest-looking sportsman, modestly, but not shamefacedly, showing us one thrush and one linnet. An image-man told me to-day, that after the trade for classical models Apollos and Venuses had gone out, and nobody would buy, Tam o' Shanter and Souter Johnny operated a good revival of the fine arts for several months.
There was too much of an air of purpose about it to permit of the thought that it was a mere accident or coincidence; but whether it was a musical contest between rival vocalists, or the love song of a tomtit and his mate, I could not determine. Cunning in other ways, it would be strange if the tomtits did not display acuteness in the selection of nesting sites.
It is probable that the linnets and tomtits of the last century gossiped a great deal about the chief justice.
Overhead little birds, tomtits and creepers, played about the bark of the fir-trees; a robin came and looked at her consideringly, with a bright sensible eye; from two hundred feet below, the murmur of the burn rose constant and insistent; but no other sound broke the stillness, nor was there any sign of human life upon the top of the cliff. At last the girl could stand it no longer.
Delicate yellow blades of grass nodded over the blanching turf; the nimble tomtits were hopping about the bare dark-brown twigs; some belated larks were hurriedly running about the paths; a hare was creeping cautiously about among the greens; a herd of cattle wandered lazily over the stubble.
A Hemingway puppy was stalking some Hemingway tomtits, in the bland, leisurely, inoffensive manner of one whose intentions were not serious; and the picture was completed by a Hemingway cat, with a blue ribbon round its neck, which was purring to itself in a serenity that a stray page of a Sunday supplement never yet afforded man.
And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at once? Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits. And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember: but we may go on with such talk for ever. Wiser men than we have asked the same question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet.
This was sad news for the Tomtits; but they were brave little fellows, and seeing they could not help themselves, they set about making the best of it. Before a week had gone by they were in their usual good spirits again, scrambling about the twigs or chasing one another as before. They had still the assurance that winter would end.
The same bright yet tender tint reddened the crab-apple and the wild- cherry; the tomtits and the robins chirped as before, among the bushes, and, as in the previous year, one heard the sound of the beechnuts and acorns dropping on the rocky paths.
"Don't you know that all the game, and all the turf, and all the bog, and all the gravel, and all the furze on this common belong to the Right Honourable Earl Spencer?" "And all the blackbirds, and all the greenfinches, and all the sparrows, and all the tomtits too, I suppose?" replied I. "To be sure they do and I'm common-keeper. Now you'll give me up that hare immediately."
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