o it like we do it," said the chaffinch, swelling with
pride again, "for we sing and you can't, and if you can't sing you have
no business to fight, and besides, though you are much older than me you
are not married yet. Now I have such a beautiful wife, and to tell you
the truth, Bevis, we do the fighting because the ladies love to see it,
and kiss us for it afterwards. I am the knight of this tree!"

After which Bevis, being tired of swinging, went to the summer-house to
read what he had written with his stump of pencil till he was called to
tea. In the evening, when the sun was sinking, he went out and lay down
on the seat--it was a broad plank, grey with lichen--under the russet
apple-tree, looking towards the west, over the brook below. He saw the
bees coming home to the hives close by on the haha, and they seemed to
come high in the air, flying straight as if from the distant hills where
the sun was. He heard the bees say that there were such quantities of
flowers on the hills, and such pleasant places, and that the sky was
much more blue up there, and he thought if he could he would go to the
hills soon.

CHAPTER III.

ADVENTURES OF THE WEASEL.

After awhile the mowers came and began to cut the long grass in the Home
Field, and the meadow by the brook. Bevis could see them from the
garden, and it was impossible to prevent him from straying up the
footpath, so eager was he to go nearer. The best thing that could be
done, since he could not be altogether stopped, was to make him promise
that he would not go beyond a certain limit. He might wander as much as
he pleased inside the hedge and the Home Field, in which there was no
pond, nor any place where he could very well come to harm. But he must
not creep through the hedge, so that he would always be in sight from
the garden. If he wished to enter the meadow by the brook he must ask
special permission, that some one might be put to watch now and then.

But more expressly he was forbidden to enter the Little Field. The grass
there was not yet to be mown--it was too long to walk in--and they were
afraid lest he should get through the hedge, or climb over the high
padlocked gate in some way or other, for the Long Pond was on the other
side, though it could not be seen for trees. Nor was he to approach
nearer to the mowers than one swathe; he was always to keep one swathe
between him and the scythes, which are extremely sharp and dangerous
instruments.