THE
PET Fl\ITE. Voi . . V,
JULY, 1883 .
No . 38.
"STORY OF A SCARECROW ."
J
1' was the first of September, Ii— and 1 were on the point of starting . armed to the teeth, when the good genius of the partridges
put it into the girls' heads to accompany us . The girls were K—'s sister and my cousin, both lively young ladies, considerably addicted to chaffing people in general and the lords of creation in particular . After the delay of about an hour, during which they had laid in a store of' sandwiches sufficient for a week ' s cruise, we started for the turnips, attended by an ancient keeper, with a chronic wink, and an expression of profound contempt for sportsmen who allowed " young ladies " to come chattering alongside . Till about mi.d-day we had a very good time of it . So had the birds . What with talking and laughing, and getting the girls over the fences, we generally saw wings and tails disappearing over some distant hedge when we entered a covert . There was, however, one field of turnips before us which I resolved to beat in a proper and sportsmanlike manner . I therefore persuaded the ladies to wait in the lane leading to the field, while we, by crossing a stream which bounded it for some distance, circumvented the birds . Having thus got over the difficulty of light dresses and parasols, the said garments being quite hidden by the tall thorn hedges, we proceeded to our place of crossing, where the stream was spanned by a knotty old pine trunk . I crept over this precarious bridge in safety . K— was not so lucky ; just as he reached the middle he slipped, and would have gone head first into the stream if a broken branch had not caught his nether garments and held him suspended over the flood . The garments, however, were not proof against this unusual strain, and gave way, poor P going splash into the beck, while a signal of distress, formed by a large rag of his clothes, floated from the fatal knot . He scrambled out, and looked angrily at my vain attempts to compose my face, for I