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There was a little vignette of Bewick's, which he had loved as a child, where a minute figure sits in a tiny horned and winged car, in mid air, throwing out with a free gesture the reins attached to the bodies of a flight of cranes; the only symbol of his destination a crescent moon, shining in dark skies beyond him.
If he can see the modern interpretation of his dream he must be pleasantly surprised. Bewick's woodcock is one of the most beautiful portraits in the book: the accurate detail of the feather markings of the wings and back and the softer tone of the breast are as nearly perfection as possible. A woodcock visited Aldington in one of the very severe winters but managed to elude all pursuers.
"Yes, and one is constantly learning those lessons in one way and another during all the rest of one's life," sighed Aunt Barbara. Then her face lighted up, and she added, "Just in proportion as she thinks that she does things for other people she is making steps upward for herself." "I always think that Betty looks like Bewick's picture of the robin redbreast; you remember it?
Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I returned to my book Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.
"That's Bewick's wren," he said. We got out and watched it as it darted in and out of the fence and sang. I asked him if he knew whether the little gray gnatcatcher was to be seen there. I had not seen or heard it for thirty years. "Yes," he replied, "I saw it the last time I was here, over by a spring run." We walked over to some plum-trees where there had been a house at one time.
French, "Cygne de Bewick." I have very little authority for including Bewick's Swan in my list of Guernsey birds; Mr. MacCulloch, however, writes me word, "The Common Hooper has visited us in severe winters, and is certainly not the only species of wild Swan that has been shot here."
During my visit there we named over seventy-five species of birds and fowl, he knowing all of them but two, and I knowing all but two. He taught me Bewick's wren and the prairie warbler, and I taught him the swamp sparrow and one of the rarer warblers; I think it was the pine warbler. If he had found the Lincoln sparrow again, he would have been one ahead of me.
In her expatiating upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of publicly weeping over his departure. It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick's departure he sought for one one having reference to Estelle.
Wretched creature! my life was to be nothing better than that of the horse in Bewick's terrible picture. I was 'waiting for death. Part of my income was derived from interest on money lent to a cousin. Without any warning I had a letter to say that he was bankrupt, and that his estate would probably not pay eighteenpence in the pound.
The wind screamed hoarsely among the elder-bushes, and the wintry sea made strange noises on the sands, but the happy boys in the bright room never much heeded the weather outside. When Miss Anne had made sure that her guests had spotless hands she let them visit her book-shelves, and they could look through the precious volumes of Bewick's Natural History.
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