A HOUSE BY THE BOLDRE 5 



evening a distance of two miles. I have no doubt 

 they can be heard a good mile. 



But it is of this, to a bird lover, delectable spot in 

 the best bird-months of April, May, and June that I 

 have to write. The house, too, that gave me shelter 

 must be spoken of; for never have I known any 

 human habitation in a land where people are dis- 

 covered dwelling in so many secret, green, out-of-the- 

 world places, which had so much of nature in and 

 about it. Grown-up and young people were in it, 

 and children too, but they were girls, and had always 

 quite spontaneously practised what I had preached 

 pet nothing and persecute nothing. There was no 

 boy to disturb the wild creatures with his hunting 

 instincts and loud noises; no dog, no cat, nor any 

 domestic creature except the placid cows and fowls 

 which supplied the household with milk and eggs. 

 A small old picturesque red-brick house with high- 

 pitched roof and tall chimneys, a great part of it 

 overrun with ivy and creepers, the walls and tiled 

 roof stained by time and many-coloured lichen to a 

 richly variegated greyish red. The date of the house, 

 cut in a stone tablet in one of the rooms, was 1692. 

 In front there was no lawn, but a walled plot of 

 ground with old once ornamental trees and bushes 

 symmetrically placed yews, both spreading and 

 cypress-shaped Irish yew, and tall tapering jumper, 

 and arbor vitas ; it was a sort of formal garden which 

 had long thrown off its formality. In a corner of 



