oung man coming away from it, holding a
handkerchief to his face. He stopped to tell Jane Nettles how he had
been stung, and the children wandered off unheeded to look at the
nest. It was all grey and gossamer, like cobwebs laid in layers. Beth
was an Indian scout inspecting it from behind a neighbouring tree; and
then she shelled it with sticks, but did not wait to see it surrender.

They picked up horse-chestnuts from under the trees, in the season,
and hammered the green rind off with stones for the joy of seeing the
beautiful shining, slippery, dark brown, or piebald, polished fruit
within; and also, when there were wet leaves on the ground, they
gathered walnuts from out of the long tangled grass, and stained their
fingers picking off the covering, which was mealy-green when it burst,
and smelt nice; but the nut itself, when they came to it, was always
surprisingly small. There were horrid mahogany-coloured pieces of
liver put about the walks on sticks sometimes. Jane Nettles said they
were to poison the dogs because they came in and destroyed the
flowers. Beth wondered how it was people could eat liver if it
poisoned dogs, and was careful afterwards not to touch it herself.
Most children would have worried the reason out of their nurse, but
Jane Nettles was not amiable, and Beth could never bring herself to
ask a question of any one who was likely either to snub her for
asking, or to jeer at her for not knowing. There are unsympathetic
people who have a way of making children feel ashamed of their
ignorance, and rather than be laughed at, a sensitive child will
pretend to know. Beth was extraordinarily sensitive in this respect,
and so it happened that, in later life, she sometimes found herself in
ignorance of things which less remarkable people had learnt in their
infancy for the asking.

These were certainly days of delight to Beth, but the charm of them was
due less to people than to things--to some sight or scent of nature, the
smell of new-mown hay from a waggon they had stood aside to let pass in
a narrow lane, a glimpse of a high bank on the other side of the road--a
high grassy bank, covered and crowned with trees, chiefly chestnuts, on
which the sun shone; hawthorn hedgerows from which they used to pick the
green buds children call bread-and-butter, and eat them; and one
privet-hedge in their own garden, an impenetrable hedge, on the other
side of which, as Beth imagined, all kinds of wonderful things t