158 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



ing. On the other side of the hedge in which 

 the bird sat concealed was a cottage garden, and 

 there on a swing fastened to a pair of apple trees, 

 a girl about eleven years old sat lazily swinging 

 herself. Once or twice after she began singing 

 the nightingale broke out again, and then at last 

 he became silent altogether, his voice overpowered 

 by hers. Girl and bird were not five yards apart. 

 It greatly surprised me to hear her singing, for 

 it was eleven o'clock, when all the village children 

 were away at the National School, a time of day 

 when, so far as human sounds were concerned, 

 there reigned an almost unbroken silence. But 

 very soon I recalled the fact that this was a very 

 lazy child, and concluded that she had coaxed her 

 mother into sending an excuse for keeping her at 

 home, and so had kept her liberty on this beau- 

 tiful morning. About two minutes' walk from 

 the cottage, at the side of the crooked road run- 

 ning through the village, there was a group of 

 ancient pollarded elm trees with huge, hollow 

 trunks, and behind them an open space, a pleasant 

 green slope, where some of the village children 

 used to go every day to play on the grass. Here 

 I used to see this girl lying in the sun, her dark 



