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I remember it well, because of two things. First, that Jem got five of the largest hips we had ever seen off a leafless dog-rose branch which stuck far out of the hedge, and picked the little green coronets off, so that they were smooth and glossy, and egg-shaped, and crimson on one side and yellow on the other; and then he got an empty chaffinch's nest close by and put the five hips into it, and took it home, and persuaded Alice our new parlourmaid that it was a robin redbreast's nest with eggs in it.
The migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird's melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song the air is full of the sound of farewell.
Don't you see that what puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast's nest? Don't you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don't you hear the poor hen calling as it were for help? Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge, where the common, with its clear stream winding between clumps of elms, assumes so park-like an appearance.
This enlightened remark produced such a torrent of oaths from Major Hardy as was only stemmed by the M.L.O.'s assurance that there was no real doubt about the Redbreast's going to Suvla. We left the cabin to the sound of a long "Ha-ha-ha!" from its engaging occupant, who had been tickled, you see, by the Major's outburst. We were ferried on a steam-tug to the Redbreast, and climbed aboard.
And after luncheon Jacinth came and sat beside her in her favourite position, a low stool beside Lady Myrtle's chair, whence she could rest one elbow on her friend's knee and look up into her kind old face with the strangely familiar dark eyes, which were dearer to Robin Redbreast's owner than even the girl herself suspected. 'I want to talk to you, dear Lady Myrtle, she began.
"'Tis not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cups of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There alway, alway something sings." The universe was ever new and fresh in his eyes, not spent, or fallen, or degraded, but eternally tending upward:
I was standing among the crowd on her deck, when there was a sound of a rolling chain and a slight rocking of the boat, which provoked an indelicate man near me to take off his helmet and pretend to be sick in it. There was a rumbling of the engines as their wheels began to revolve, and a throbbing of the Redbreast's heart as though she found difficulty in getting under way with such a load.
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