114 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



light hair, and blue eyes, as unlike their parents in 

 appearance as they were in their indomitable little 

 tempers. But they were pretty, delightful children 

 for all that. 



Besides the people of the house there were four 

 unhuman inmates a semi-domestic robin who visited 

 the kitchen at all hours ; a tabby cat who was per- 

 petually being dragged hither and thither by the two 

 little ones, and bore it all with singular equanimity ; a 

 very old good-tempered collie dog, and a pet lamb. 

 The lamb was often tethered in the orchard to keep 

 him out of mischief, and whenever I went near him 

 he would look to me for a biscuit or a lump of sugar, 

 and failing to get it he would try to eat my clothes. 

 It was on account of this animal that I found out 

 something of the inner life of the people of the house 

 which I should not otherwise have known. I told 

 my gentle hostess that her lamb was not quite 

 happy left alone tied up in the orchard, and I 

 wondered that they, poor hard-working people, had 

 burdened themselves with so unsuitable an animal 

 for a pet. 



She said that the lamb was not intended to be kept 

 as a pet ; they had it for another purpose, and what 

 that purpose was I easily drew from her and her 

 husband. 



They were religious people, and had always been 

 " church," as their parents and grandparents had been 

 before them, but now for a very long time past the 



