56 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



grey eyes, an expression of intelligent curiosity and 

 fellowship ; and his full face, bronzed with sixty 

 or sixty-five years' exposure to the weather, was 

 genial, as if the sunshine that had so long beaten 

 on it had not been all used up in painting his skin 

 that rich old-furniture colour, but had, some of it, 

 filtered through the epidermis into the heart to make 

 his existence pleasant and sweet. But it was a very 

 rough-cast face, with shapeless nose and thick lips. 

 He was short and broad-shouldered, always in the 

 warm weather in his shirt-sleeves, a shirt of some 

 very coarse material and of an earthen colour, his 

 brown thick arms bare to the elbows. Waistcoat 

 and trousers looked as if he had worn them for half 

 his life, and had a marbled or mottled appearance 

 as if they had taken the various tints of all the 

 objects and materials he: had handled or rubbed 

 against in his life's work — wood, mossy trees, grass, 

 clay, bricks, stone, rusty iron, and dozens more. 

 He wore the field-labourer's thick boots ; his ancient 

 rusty felt hat had long lost its original shape ; and 

 finally, to complete the portrait, a short black day 

 pipe was never out of his hps — ^never, at all events, 

 when I saw him, which was often ; for every day 

 as I strolled past his domain he would be on the 

 outside of his hedge, or just coming out of his gate, 

 invariably with something in his hand — a spade, 

 a fork, or stick of wood, or an old empty fruit basket. 



