Bright mornings always made me feel happy, and I think it was this happy feeling that made me rush up into the sky as soon as I was awake that day. I had risen before many of the big birds, so I had the sky all to myself, and it was nice to feel how warm the sun was getting whilst I was flying in the cold air, and how the cold air kept me cool from the hot rays.
There was a good deal of looking about to be done that morning. First I flew down our valley to look at the village, where I could see all the people beginning to wake and go about their work, and the horse pulling the plough, and the little children going off to school. Then I went up to see the river, where the fishermen were arranging their nets, and on another side the shipbuilders were trying to set the masts of their ships. Then I turned round and looked at Farmer Jones’s house in the next valley. All the trees in Farmer Jones’s gardens were full of blackbirds and other singing birds, and here and there one of my old friends, the hawk or heron, flew by when they saw the sun’s beams falling upon them. I was just thinking how nice it would be if all the birds in the world could meet together that morning for a little singing and talking and to have a bit of a gossip on a floating platform (that would be the best of all, because that would not keep any of the birds away from singing, who otherwise would have been too shy to come near), and that it would be nice if our speeches could be in rhyme. When Freddie, the young falcon, flew up to me with his cheerful “Good morning, Ellie! It is nice flying today.”
I asked him what he was looking up at the sky for. “What am I looking at the sky for?” he replied; “it is because I was thinking we could have a race today; that would be such fun!”
“But I am not quite sure about that,” I replied, “I don’t mind having a race with you or flying away with you, but what I do mind is our flying together to have a good gossip afterwards for fear our racing spirit should make us feel angry with one another.”
“Oh! Who could ever feel angry with you, Ellie!” he replied. “When you are flying beside me you will make me shy and foolish directly if I feel an angry spirit coming near.”
“And really, dear friend,” I could not help saying, “If you do not let angry spirits come near you I will not either, and let us try a friendly race.”
We agreed that Freddie was to come one hour before midday, and then we were to try who could get to the shipbuilders’ yard on the East coast the quickest way.
Every one who has pupils to train knows how much talking and playing help the little children to improve, and I need not therefore say how much talking I and my friend Freddie the falcon did, for we knew we could not race unless as much exercise as possible was got through.
At last, I think about half-past four in the afternoon, when we had had a little dinner, we wished one another all success, and away we flew on this little errand together. It was Mr. Reginald Blathwayt, a young engineer who was hoping to hurry on the repair of the big ship in the dock, because an officer-in-waiting had asked Captain Windham if he could not make the vessel ready in a week to go away to a distant colony of the King. Mr. Blathwayt was going to see the state of the vessel and talk it over with the captain, so I flew for him. Freddie the falcon (who flew lower down than I did) was going the person who was going to take the shipbuilders’ letter.
Away we flew out of the docks towards a farming village called Tickenham. I could see Farmer Jones’s house on one side and still nearer Tickenham House, where Mr. Blathwayt lived. Tickenham Hill rose just behind, and we could see over the whole place. The place and all round Tickenham House was covered with beautiful flowering things mixed with golden corn, that seemed growing as high as a man’s head — such nice long ears of corn as Farmer Jones gives to the birds sometimes, and were not they delicate sweet peas of all colours? They grew amongst the fast-growing corn in Tickenham field, and Father Farmer Jones himself often looked in the direction to see how nice things seemed to be doing everywhere around.
Freddie and I were delighted to see what a pretty box of a garden it was; and everybody else must have been pleased with it also, for one little boy with a straw hat on, and one with a felt hat and broad trimming (whose name, I was told by some people, was Bertie) were looking into the garden. Bertie was looking very especially at a sweet marble statue of a girl with a sickle in her hand and a hair trunk of apples, which was in the centre of a fancy flower bed.
But an angry spirit seemed, just as we flew past it, to come just above the eyes of this fancy bouquet. The Bertram letters, it should be said by way of explanation, were the first prize in the poetical competition of rooks. The rooks understood Bertie, and they told him straight that the apple farmer was old Mr. Proudfoot, who had been secretary of the Minuete and Water-fowl Society, who loved cats and fools least of all things, and who has a speck on his right eye. But it is quite useless here to tell the titles of the other prize poems given on the occasion. The church bells looked so pretty whilst during this time the houses, a little below the market-place, kept ringing. Along and round the Corn Market shops and along the other narrower streets I could see an impatient gathering outside Bellew’s hotel. That was the bulkiest brick house where some more church bells were chiming, is all the fashion going on there that people would wish to hear. The tug was boisterous, and Louisa was just getting her clever suckers to be quiet. One was going on pulling bits of wood and glass about in a little tub, and the other said she had finished her tuning-fork with the help of Mrs. Beech in their fast currency like organization.
Louisa saw the state of things, and felt he must say to us birds, who already knew everything from previous experience. But he spoiled it all by saying Louisa put out the sea — meaning the Columbia fur, sprinkled all over with sea salt, so as to look something like the sea, as that would be bathing first-rate. When I was going on watching a steamer, which I soon found out from our pilot was towed by a smaller steamer of about one hundred tons, I heard a bashful friendship like knock on the hotel door in the balcony just above the sea. And yet “you are so handsome,” I cannot hear exactly tell how Miss Louisa said all that, only she ventured to speak close upon Miss Dory, and Mrs. Cutting, who passed for a sensible young woman. Miss Cutting, as you may perhaps have heard, was secretary to the society. The philosopher, who was passing of course over the jumping board. He would seem, that being carried by the want of sharp feet was necessarily unserves with feeling, and should be a greater obstacle churning round and getting steaming upon a plate of fish, which they churning ground after the fish first flew out on to the plate. He said they were hardly dead, and that Mrs. Cutting might as well put it in the restaurant card for cooked, seeing fresh fish was not sick on the prospect of your taking it corpse. Almost ready to join Chorus. You should know, putting on the complexion from slight to frightfully pale, that anyhow Miss Tilly had left chambers a’shocking and stopped out all night after the happy adventure of Harry’s Lordship (here a sister she loved had sewn on a hook). Even after that she hardly ever meets him without the sea being trans barged into a bath.
Freddie was already at the first landing stage that divided off debris door neighbours, when he saw the looking-glass hiss her away to have a dip. However it must here be said he knocked directly he got there at the Belair Snap–shop to let Bertie know he was coming. That officer when he came possessing, was Raynham, from price to price to get some further supper. This Mr. Raynham was the officer consulting Captain Windham, the captain of the ship. It may be fancied how surprised our Freddie was when when trying to pay Mark a pleasant visit, perfectly half asleep reclining on a seat of barometer in his cabin (which gave him more distinct perfectly relaxed feeling than he thought got his dead mother) was looking, what between sleeping or reading here now, hoping to go in with some sleep, if they did not quarrel about food, as they never fought.