patiating
on the extent of the woods and their richness in flowers--"just fair
scatted up wi' geranniums and the rest o' them:" offering to take the
expedition by the nearest way to the treasures, and especially insisting
on the number and beauty and tameness of the pheasants, till Mr. Byles
was charmed and was himself surprised at the humanising influence of
scientific pursuits.

Nor had Peter boasted vainly of his wood lore, for he led them by so
direct a way that, before they came to the place of flowers, the
expedition--except the two little chaps, whom Speug sent round in
Nestie's charge, to a selected rendezvous as being next door to
babies--had climbed five dykes, all with loose stones, fought through
three thickets very prickly indeed, crawled underneath two hedges,
crossed three burns, one coming up to the knees, and mired themselves
times without number. Cosh had jostled against Speug in leaping from one
dry spot to another and come down rolling in the mud, which made his
appearance from behind wonderful; Speug, in helping Thomas John out of a
very entangling place, had been so zealous that the seat had been almost
entirely detached from Thomas John's trousers, and although Mr. Byles
had done his best with pins, the result was not edifying; his brother's
straw hat had fallen in the exact spot where Speug landed as he jumped
from a wall, and was of no further service, and so the younger
Dowbiggin--"who is so refined in his ways," as his mother used to
say--wore as his headgear a handkerchief which had been used for
cleaning the mud from his clothes. Upon Mr. Byles, whom fate might have
spared, misfortunes had accumulated. His trousers had been sadly mangled
from the knee downwards as he crawled through a hole, and had to be
wound round his legs with string, and although Speug had pulled his cap
out of a branch, he had done his work so hastily as to leave the peak
behind, and he was so clumsy, with the best intentions, that he allowed
another branch to slip, which caught Mr. Byles on the side of the head
and left a mark above his eye, which distinctly suggested a prizefight
to anyone not acquainted with that gentleman's blameless character.
Peter himself had come unscathed from the perils of land and water, save
a dash of mud here and there and a suspicion of wet about his feet,
which shows how bad people fare better than good. The company was so
bedraggled and discouraged that their minds did not seem set on wi