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Blee, Will, and one or two other favoured spirits spent a further half-hour in their host's private parlour, and there consumed a little sloe gin, to steady the humming ale. "You an' me must see wan another home," said Will when he and Mr. Blee departed into the frosty night. "Fust time as ever you give me an arm," murmured Billy. "Won't be the last, I'm sure," declared Will.
In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe. 'This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me, whispered the Rat, as if in a trance.
Close beside it is the sea, the ever-changing sea, and between the two is placed the broad high-road. One carriage after another rolls over it; but I did not follow them, for my eye loves best to rest upon one point. A Hun's Grave lies there, and the sloe and blackthorn grow luxuriantly among the stones. Here is true poetry in nature. "And how do you think men appreciate this poetry?
We poured some sloe gin into her and calmed her down, and then my eldest son took her home; and when he came back, he said that Bob Battle had gone to bed. "I looked in where he sleeps," said my son, "and Bob was in his shirt, quite calm and composed, saying his prayers." "Trust him for being calm and composed," I said. "None ever saw him otherwise.
In a sober condition he would have come to grief twenty times over, but Fate always protects the toper. Then he strayed into a vast forest; zig-zagged through fens and coppices like an old dog-wolf; tore himself almost to ribbons among the sloe and blackberry bushes, and emerged at last at a ramshackle forest-keeper's hut, the door of which stood wide open.
Various other vegetables might also be employed for this purpose; such as sage, balm, peppermint, and similar spicy plants; the flowers of the sweet woodroof, those of the burnet, or pimpernel rose; the leaves of peach and almond trees, the young and tender leaves of bilberry, and common raspberry; and the blossoms of the blackthorn, or sloe tree.
In the cupboard with the jam-pots, there were two or three boxes of cigars, the famous sloe gin, and other liqueurs, for the entertainment of such highly esteemed visitors; and so long as one of them occupied the colossal armchair, her husband was quite a different Dale.
In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe. "This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance.
Mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods.
"I have a very clever old dog at home," said Lady Constance, turning to the children, "called 'Sloe. She was, in her youth and prime, a most valuable retriever, but now is grown too old to do much but sleep in the sunshine. Eddie and Molly were given some time ago two pretty young white rabbits. They looked like balls of white fluff, and were the prettiest toy-like pets you can imagine.