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A variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular pile or nest which they make of sticks, in the shape of a hay-cock, three or four feet high and many feet in circumference. A great many occupy the same pile and are killed with sticks as they run out. Snakes, lizards and other reptiles are procured among the rocks or in the scrubs.
'And I know he'll lead you to ruin! cried Ellen, half crying: 'a boy that comes from nowhere and nobody knows, and sleeps on a hay-cock all night, no better than a mere tramp! 'What, quarrelling here? 'said Mrs. King, coming up-stairs. 'The lad, I wish him no ill, I'm sure, but he'll be gone by to-morrow, so you may hold your tongues about him, and we'll read our chapter and go to bed.
After breakfast we rehearsed Mr. Craven's and Captain Shelley's and my scenes in "Hernani." I think they will do very well if they do not shy at the moment of action, or rather acting. We had some music, and then the gentlemen went out shooting. I took "The Abbot" and established myself on a hay-cock, leaving Lady Francis to her own indoor devices.
'I'd sooner give work to a pig at once, said Ellen; 'but I do believe he's getting it. I fancy they are short of hands for the hay. Yes, he's pointing into the field. Ay, and he's sending him into the yard. 'I hope he'll give him some breakfast, said Alfred. 'Do you know he slept all night on a hay-cock?
The straw was not straw: it was short-cut hay, old enough to have lost all scent of hay, and to have acquired some other scents less pleasing to the nose; hay, trodden, pressed, and matted down, without a vestige in it of its ancient elasticity. There was nothing in it to remind us of a summer tumble on the hay-cock. The barn roof was open, and the March night wind whistled over us.
We were conversing very amicably, regarding each other through a friendly vista formed by the sugar-bowl and tea-pot, when a horrid man, that looked as if he had slept all his life in a hay-cock and only waked up to turn it over, stuck his head in and immediately introduced a clover-field; and Fleda and he went to tumbling about the cocks till I do assure you I was deluded into a momentary belief that hay-making was the principal end of human nature, and looked upon myself as a burden to society; and after I had recovered my locality and ventured upon a sentence of gentle commiseration for her sufferings, Fleda went off into a eulogium upon the intelligence of hay-makers in general and the strength of mind barbarians are universally known to possess."
A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword in hand: to give him equal value in a more pacific shape cannot, I should imagine, be considered as injurious to the Church of Ireland; and what right has that Church to complain if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burden of supporting a double ecclesiastical establishment?
Of course, the Blackbird could not resist going to see and, as far as he could, share the fun, and he and his family had a private banquet of their own: for it so happened that one plate of fruit had been put behind a little hay-cock and then overlooked and forgotten, and there, fearless of gardeners or nets, the Blackbirds devoured the last of the strawberries.
"A rattler the valley's full of 'em, some of 'em 's human." The snake was dispatched and the two went on to the next hay-cock. Bud was turning over more than the hay, and presently he spoke more seriously than was his habit with Jerry. "You're full enough of warnings, Jerry. What do you want me to do about it?" "Drift," Jerry advised. "There's moral diseases just as catching as smallpox.
Edgar and Geoffrey and Maurice and Clara and Paul jumped. Paul won, because he was light. Clara's blood was roused. She could run like an Amazon. Paul loved the determined way she rushed at the hay-cock and leaped, landed on the other side, her breasts shaken, her thick hair come undone. "You touched!" he cried. "You touched!" "No!" she flashed, turning to Edgar.
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