CHAPTER V.

BOAR HUNTING.

That first morning at Gaybrook passed like a flash of lightning. There was so much to be seen and explored. From the poultry-yard, where its scores of feather inmates held a world of delight, to the water-meadows, which formed the limit of the farm boundaries, and were so designated because they were intersected by the little river Gay.

Here an old punt proved very attractive to the elder boys, when they tired of the hay-field. To the copse, adjoining the water-meadows, Di retired, partly to practise a little climbing in private--an exercise, which to her regret, she could not well pursue in the London Square garden--and also animated by the hope of surprising some big nest--a pheasant’s perhaps.

Phoena was lost to sight amongst tall rows of peas and French beans in the garden. “Probably preaching sermons to the bees,” Phil declared. Hubert and Marygold agreed to join forces. They started by conscientiously trying to secure a “personal interview” with everything in feathers in the farmyard, Hubert doing his utmost to work the scarlet-wattled turkey-cock into an ungovernable rage. That pleasure exhausted, this young pair next betook themselves to a vast apple-orchard.

This new ground promised scope for endless adventure; it suggested such a wide field for enterprise.

In many places the high rank grass was over Hubert’s head, once Marygold’s brilliant locks entirely disappeared, so that, as she reminded Hubert, it must be like those jungle places in _Injia_, of which his father had told them so many stories.

“You don’t think,” said Hubert, a little apprehensively, “that there are any wild beasts hidden about under the grass to spring out and eat us, you know?”

Marygold didn’t feel quite sure.

“Suppose we go and ask Mrs. Busson,” she suggested, standing still.

But Hubert dissented.

“No, don’t let’s,” he said, “because p’raps she’d be afraid for us then, and say we had better not come in, and that would be a pity.”

Marygold thought that on the whole Hubert’s advice was sound.

“Besides,” she added, with some vagueness of speech, “I expect we’d have time to run if any came. Lions roar ever so loud, and tigers’ eyes gleam ever so far off. Besides, you know in the book at home with a man riding a camel on the cover, it says there are no more wild beasts in England.”

Reinforced by these reflections, the small adventurers plunged boldly into the grassy sea, hand-in-hand for the first few steps, but very soon Marygold broke away with a cry of delight from Hubert. Her sharp eyes had discovered a glorious find, the first of many to follow.

It was a currant bush that she had espied, half-buried under the rank growth of grass, the clusters of fruit showing redly amongst the coarse green blades that went near to hiding it altogether.

The children’s glee knew no bounds.

“I b’lieve,” cried Marygold, her voice piercingly shrill with excitement, “that we’ve found ’Laddin’s garden with the trees bearing the wonderful fruit that was jewels, you know.”

For now, in addition to currant-bushes, red, white, and black, Hubert had lighted on some raspberry canes with ripening fruit too.

“Don’t you know,” went on Marygold, “that in the fairy-book it says, that the white, red, and yellow fruit were really pearls and rubies and topaz and--”

“I expect,” broke in Hubert, whose utterance was somewhat impeded by the handfuls of fruit, which he had been diligently cramming into his mouth, “I expect that it’s really a sort of buried-alive garden, for it is quite real fruit, Marygold, and _raver_ sour.”

“I’ll tell you,” was the reply, “it must belong to the fairies, and Mrs. Busson can’t know anything about it.”

“’Spose we keep it all a secret,” said Hubert.

“Oh! but you always say that,” said Marygold, reproachfully, “and then you _never_ do. No, let’s say that we’ve found a garden but we can’t say where.”

“Yes,” cried Hubert, “and let’s get a cabbage leaf and put some of the fruit in it, just to show them that it’s all true.”

The idea was a charming one, but it was not carried out. For on their way to the kitchen garden, Hubert pulled Marygold back.

“Look! look!” he gasped, pointing to the end of the big orchard, “there _are_ some wild beasts.”

Following the direction of his frantically waving arm, Marygold descried the black backs of some dozen little pigs, bobbing up and down in the high grass and looking like a shoal of porpoises leaping in the sea.

“They’re only pigs, little pigs,” said Marygold; but fired by a spirit of adventure, Hubert dashed off in pursuit, declaring that “of course, they were big, wild boars.”

But he was treading unknown ground, and although he was not “infirm and old,” like the minstrel in his poetry-book, he was young and not very steady on his feet, and presently the stump of one of those “buried-alive trees” proved fatal to his further progress. With a sudden yell he tottered and fell downwards amongst the grass.

Marygold, who had followed on his heels, was quickly helping Hubert to rise, questioning him anxiously as to the extent of his injuries, when from the depths of a dry ditch, which skirted two sides of the orchard, an odd little figure suddenly appeared and slowly advanced to the scene of Hubert’s disaster.

There was a droll mixture of curiosity and anxiety on Gaston’s small sallow face as he approached this detachment of the dreaded invaders.

Libbie had given him his breakfast in the dairy that morning, when she found that he was too nervous to face the new-comers; and since then Gaston had betaken himself to the shelter of the big ditch in this remote orchard, making sure that there, at any rate, he would be left to his own company and that of the little pigs.

For the latter he entertained quite a warm affection.

But Hubert’s cry of distress had lured him out of his retreat, and having satisfied himself that he was bigger than either Marygold or her cousin, his fears for his own safety abated.

“Ah! where have you _harm_?” he asked, scanning Hubert carefully, who was still gasping heavily from the shock of his sudden downfall.

“Are you the little French boy?” asked Marygold, by way of answer.

“I am Anatole Jules Gaston Delzant,” was the reply, “And I am more big than you,” he added, as he drew himself up to his full height beside Hubert.

The latter, who was entirely diverted from his injuries by the sight of Gaston, was quite ready to make friends, all the more so when he learned that though the French boy was

nearly two years older than himself, he was not inclined to treat him as a baby.

And so in a wonderfully short time the three children became firm allies, and when the dinner-bell rang and Ruth came in search of her charges, she found them in hot pursuit of the black pigs; Gaston having greatly increased Hubert’s keenness for this sport by his accounts of the boar-hunts in France.

“What a pity that dinner has come so soon,” said the children.