In two minutes he was turned neck and crop out of the garden. The Poet utterly refused to listen to his plea that a boy had as good a right to a strawberry as a blackbird. He was beginning to get irritated. For the moment he loved neither boys, nor strawberries, nor even blackbirds. Misfortunes never come alone, and as he turned from the garden gate he began to be aware that it was raining. He looked up, and for the first time for weeks he saw a dull leaden sky, with here and there a ragged edge of cloud driven across it from the west. The thirsty soil began to drink in the moisture, and dull and dusty leafage quickly grew clean and wholesome; but the strawberries—such few as they could find—had no flavour that day; and now too the slugs came out refreshed, and finished the work of the blackbirds. The rain went on next day, and when at last it stopped the strawberry-bed was sodden and uninviting. The Member, tired of staying in the house, and eager to get back to his London suburb, where certain fruits should now be ripening on the walls of a small rectangular garden, happily free from birds, proposed that they should travel thither, and perhaps take a short tour on the Continent. By August, he urged, the garden would be delightful again, and the rowan-berries would be in all their glory; and perchance even the blackbirds would have gone into the country for a change, willing to leave poor Man a trifle in his own garden, after six months of stuffing themselves and their young. To this plan the Poet was brought to consent for he felt a little tried by his friends both human and winged. But Bessie would not go; she had too much to do at home, she said. The fact was that during those rainy days she and the Member had entered into a conspiracy with Joseph Bates and the cook—a conspiracy of which indeed, poor soul, she felt a little ashamed; but the sight of those empty white jam-pots was too much for her, and a little plotting seemed unavoidable if they were to get filled. Joseph was instructed to procure a supply of nets, and the cook a supply of sugar. The conspirators kept their secrets, and for once a plot went off without detection. The day arrived; the Poet was carried off, half unwilling, into exile: by nightfall Joseph had netted all the gooseberries and currants, and within a week a fair fruit-harvest graced the cupboard shelves. The blackbirds and their friends knew not what to make of it. It was bad enough to be disturbed, just as you were enjoying a juicy gooseberry, by the Poet mooning up and down the garden path; but to have their sweet freedom curtailed by grievous netting in the one romantic home of liberty left them in a malicious and self-seeking village—this was the unkindest cut of all. Depressed and angry, they determined to withdraw for a while and moult, and to leave the garden to the mercy of the grubs and wasps; when August came they might perhaps return to see how far wilful Man was having his own way.