IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 165 



children then, and they lived in a cottage at the side 

 of a pine and oak wood on the border of the heath. 

 Her husband was fond of birds and of all wild animals ; 

 he knew them well, and in time she, too, grew to like 

 them just as much. She loved best to hear their songs 

 and calls ; bird-voices were always to be heard, day and 

 night, all the year round. You couldn't but hear 

 them, even the faintest note of the tiniest bird, it was 

 so silent at that spot where there was no road and no 

 house near. Her solace and one pleasure outside the 

 house was in their singing. She was very much alone 

 there ; she read little and never heard any music — 

 one would have to go miles to hear a piano ; so the songs 

 of birds came to be the sweetest sounds on earth for 

 her, especially the blackbird, which was more to her 

 than any other bird. When she first came to live in 

 the village she could hardly endure the noises — so 

 many cocks crowing, children shouting, people talking, 

 carts rattling by and all kinds of noises ! It made her 

 head ache at first. Then at night, how they missed 

 the night birds' sounds — the hooting of the wood owls, 

 especially in winter, and in summer the reeling of night- 

 jars, and the corncrake and the nightingale. 



Thus for half an hour the poor woman talked and 

 talked about her old life on the heath, laughing a little 

 now and then at her own feelings — the absurdity of her 

 home-sickness when she was so near the old spot — but 

 always with a little break in her voice, avoiding all the 

 time the one subject uppermost in her mind — the very 

 one I was waiting for her to come to. And in the end 



