He looked
vexed, and Mrs. Shelley, who could read her husband's face like a book,
asked what was the matter.
"Why, again Jack has forgotten to attend to those traps for the
wheatears; when I did them myself I caught a hundred in one day; now I
leave them to him I get perhaps eighteen to twenty, because he is too
lazy to dig out the turf and make the traps properly; here are only ten
brace this evening, and they are as plentiful as sparrows just now."
"John, you are a greedy man, and Jack is not lazy; he does not approve
of killing birds; he thinks it is cruel, that is why he has not seen to
the traps, so you must not scold him about it, will you?" said Fairy,
looking up into the shepherd's grave face, as she stroked the white
breasts of the wheatears.
"You had better see to the traps yourself, John; there is always a fuss
about them every summer since you gave them to Jack to attend to. You
know, as Fairy says, he is so fond of birds, and he knows so much about
them too, that he can't bear snaring them."
"Knows so much about them! I should think he did. Why Mr. Leslie says if
Jack had only the means of getting himself some good books, he would be
a first-rate ornithologist, which means a man learned in birds, John,"
said Fairy.
She had always called the shepherd John since she could speak, and Mrs.
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