This Circumstance Caused Him Much Mental
Trouble; For, Having All His Life Consistently Opposed Any Thinning Out
Or Trimming Of Trees, He Did Not Care To Issue An Order Which Would
Almost Confess A Mistake.
Besides which, why only these particular
branches?
- The object would be so apparent. The squire, while conversing
with Ettles, twice, as if unconsciously, directed his steps beneath these
limes, and, striking the offending boughs with his stick, remarked that
they grew extremely fast. But the keeper, usually so keen to take a hint,
only answered that the lime was the quickest wood to grow of which he
knew. In his heart he enjoyed the squire's difficulty. Finally the
squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a ladder and a
hatchet, and chopped off the boughs with his own hands.
It was from the gun-room window that the squire observed the change of
the seasons and the flow of time. The larger view he often had on
horseback of miles of country did not bring it home to him. The old
familiar trees, the sward, the birds, these told him of the advancing or
receding sun. As he reclined in the corner of the broad window-seat, his
feet up, and drowsy, of a summer afternoon, he heard the languid cawing
of an occasional rook, for rooks are idle in the heated hours of the day.
He was aware, without conscious observation, of the swift, straight line
drawn across the sky by a wood-pigeon.
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