‘And what did he say?’ asked breathless Molly.

’Oh:  he only smiled, and said nothing.  You shouldn’t take up words so seriously, my dear.  Very likely he may never think of marrying again, and if he did, it would be a very good thing both for him and for you!’

Molly muttered something, as if to herself, but the squire might have heard it if he had chosen.  As it was, he wisely turned the current of the conversation.

‘Look at that!’ he said, as they suddenly came upon the mere, or large pond.  There was a small island in the middle of the glassy water, on which grew tall trees, dark Scotch firs in the centre, silvery shimmering willows close to the water’s edge.  ’We must get you punted over there, some of these days.  I’m not fond of using the boat at this time of the year, because the young birds are still in the nests among the reeds and water-plants; but we’ll go.  There are coots and grebes.’

‘Oh, look, there’s a swan!’

’Yes; there are two pair of them here.  And in those trees there is both a rookery and a heronry; the herons ought to be here by now, for they’re off to the sea in August, but I have not seen one yet.  Stay! is not that one—­that fellow on a stone, with his long neck bent down, looking into the water?’

‘Yes!  I think so.  I have never seen a heron, only pictures of them.’

’They and the rooks are always at war, which does not do for such near neighbours.  If both herons leave the nest they are building, the rooks come and tear it to pieces; and once Roger showed me a long straggling fellow of a heron, with a flight of rooks after him, with no friendly purpose in their minds, I’ll be bound.  Roger knows a deal of natural history, and finds out queer things sometimes.  He would have been off a dozen times during this walk of ours, if he’d been here; his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I only see one.  Why!  I have known him bolt into a copse because he saw something fifteen yards off—­some plant, maybe, which he would tell me was very rare, though I should say I’d seen its marrow at every turn in the woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this,’ touching a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, ’why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere.  It is a pity they don’t take honours in Natural History at Cambridge.  Roger would be safe enough if they did.’

‘Mr. Osborne Hamley is very clever, is he not?’ Molly asked, timidly.

’Oh, yes.  Osborne’s a bit of a genius.  His mother looks for great things from Osborne.  I’m rather proud of him myself.  He’ll get a Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair.  As I was saying at the magistrates’ meeting yesterday, “I’ve got a son who will make a noise at Cambridge, or I’m very much mistaken.”  Now, is it not a queer quip of Nature,’ continued the squire, turning his honest face towards Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, ’that I, a Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows when—­the Heptarchy, they say—­What’s the date of the Heptarchy?’