and scrambling--for, manage it how you may, nutting is
scrambling work,--those boughs, however tightly you may grasp them by
the young fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves, will recoil
and burst away; but there is a pleasure even in that: so on we go,
scrambling and gathering with all our might and all our glee. Oh, what
an enjoyment! All my life long I have had a passion for that sort of
seeking which implies finding (the secret, I believe, of the love of
field-sports, which is in man's mind a natural impulse)--therefore I
love violeting,--therefore, when we had a fine garden, I used to love
to gather strawberries, and cut asparagus, and above all, to collect
the filberts from the shrubberies: but this hedgerow nutting beats that
sport all to nothing. That was a make-believe thing, compared with
this; there was no surprise, no suspense, no unexpectedness--it was as
inferior to this wild nutting, as the turning out of a bag-fox is to
unearthing the fellow, in the eyes of a staunch foxhunter.

Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They are in such abundance,
that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish, nor a young man,
nor a young woman,--for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute of
country gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet has had at least half a
dozen this season; but no one has found out these. And they are so full
too, we lose half of them from over-ripeness; they drop from the socket
at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds. May is as
fond of nuts as a squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel
with equal dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to watch
them as they fall. See how her neck is thrown back like that of a swan,
and how beautifully her folded ears quiver with expectation, and how her
quick eye follows the rustling noise, and her light feet dance and pat
the ground, and leap up with eagerness, seeming almost sustained in the
air, just as I have seen her when Brush is beating a hedgerow, and she
knows from his questing that there is a hare afoot. See, she has caught
that nut just before it touched the water; but the water would have
been no defence,--she fishes them from the bottom, she delves after them
amongst the matted grass--even my bonnet--how beggingly she looks at
that! 'Oh, what a pleasure nutting is!--Is it not, May? But the pockets
are almost full, and so is the basket-bonnet, and that bright watch the
sun says it is late; and af