NEWMARKET 179 



I might have been all the monsters of history, 

 from Herod and the ogres of fairyland to the 

 unamiable uncle of the Princes in the Tower, to 

 judge by the way I was treated. The confounded 

 peewits were quite certain I was after their little 

 balls of fluff, and played all sorts of shallow tricks 

 to take me away from the shelter under a bank s 

 edge where "the babies" would be clustering up 

 *' still as a mouse." '' Same here " it was with the 

 wheatears, who offered to take me for a walk and 

 show me something I should very much like to 

 have, or some tale like that. Let em keep their 

 youngsters. Surely if I desired to commit bird 

 slaughter I should go for the grown-up creature 

 toddling along almost within stick stroke, instead 

 of searching for immature nestlings coloured to 

 match their habitat and its fittings. Then the 

 sandpipers. Was it likely I could be whistled 

 and wheedled to '*come-along-o'-me" sort of 

 wanderings just because they pantomimically 

 declared that I had better forsake my route and 

 meander away into the bush, goodness knows 

 where ? Partridges were playing much the same 

 game last time I was at Newmarket. Nobody 

 seems to leave me alone. Even the wrens came 

 out of the reeds by the Lark and scolded and 

 fussed. A wren would be a chatter-mag in church 

 or while being presented at Court — it is their 

 nature to. And the benighted great woodpecker, 

 who wants to hank his little lot out of a hole ? 

 What call had he to follow me up from tree to 

 tree, always sitting on the next, keeping still and 

 quiet till I passed and then going ahead again, 

 with his ewe neck making him look as if he would 

 fall in half, to roost and restart so long as the old 

 Scotches lasted — rather a bibulous flavour that 



