220 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



whose shallow pools doves and wood-pigeons 

 were resorting. Kind to the eyes was the 

 copious greenery on the brook's banks' sides, 

 dotted with pollards of sorts, oak, willow, elm, 

 and alder, and the grenadier growths from the 

 bed-level, reed grass, meadow-sweet, and wild 

 parsnips — mumbles they call them in those parts 

 — six and seven feet high, great billows of wild 

 roses, wide discs of elder, carpets of rock-rose on 

 the shallow angled banks, and everywhere the 

 scent of new-mown hay, with now and then the 

 faintish fermenting sweetness of stacks " making " 

 themselves. Birds, deeming themselves safe, 

 were friendly, except the chats — who must chat 

 if every wish of theirs was gratified — and the 

 butcher-birds — scolders much in the chat style — 

 and a couple of mother partridges, who, for my 

 benefit and their new-born chicks', played at 

 being broken-winged, and scuttered round (after 

 the manner of Cossack dancers as presented on 

 the stage), running on their heels till all the brood 

 were out of sight. Then, with a warning note to 

 the family to stay where they were, and a cheeky 

 chuck to myself, off they winged it, sound as a 

 bell, and twice as saucy. These and plenty more 

 delights were mine on the walk, or wade, for, like 

 the Tennysonian agricultural gentleman, I was 

 in the sea of meadow-sweet, or something equally 

 nice. But, after a visit to the AfBecks' old 

 domain, I always am a bit sorrowful now, till 

 well clear of Dalham, for thinking of the good 

 peaceful time Cecil Rhodes, who bought the park 

 and place, should have had, a reward he surely 

 earned, and his lying in the land so far away 

 from home ; and how, soon after. Colonel Frank 

 Rhodes was carried home there to be buried in 



