"You won't leave the young un, will you?" says he, as they haul poor little Arthur, already losing wind from the fright, through the next hedge. "Not we," is the answer from both.
"Indeed, that's all true, Holmes, upon my honour," added Tom; "we weren't after his fowls; guinea-hen ran out of the hedge under our feet, and we've seen nothing else."
Then they examined the prizes, gathered up their things, and went off to the brook, where Martin swallowed huge draughts of water to get rid of the taste; and they visited the sedge-bird's nest, and from thence struck across the country in high glee, beating the hedges and brakes as they went along; and Arthur at last, to his intense delight, was allowed to climb a small hedgerow oak for a magpie's nest with Tom, who kept all round him like a mother, and showed him where to hold and how to throw his weight; and though he was in a great fright, didn't show it, and was applauded by all for his lissomness.
They crossed into the next field, Tom and East taking one side of the hedges, and the other two the other side.
Now - the glass again - he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, or has gone mad; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to take it at a leap,
hedge and all!
Lord Lundie returned, very little winded, through a gap higher up the hedge.
We passed into a tangle of gooseberry bushes where, at his statesmanlike example, we crawled on all fours, and regained the hedge.
After shutting the gate behind them, I pretended to return to the house, but I immediately went out a back door, and stealing along in the shade of the
hedge, I gained yonder clump of elder, from which I could hear and see everything.
'As I am that the men were at the window,' replied Oliver, pointing down, as he spoke, to the
hedge which divided the cottage-garden from the meadow.
He led them within another but smaller circle of
hedge, where grew one large and beautiful bush.
Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green
hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them.
Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the
hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the laborers who had been sent to sow clover.