Thady looked at Mouse. "Proud I'd be, my leddy," he said, "if I owned such a dog. The constable, I'm thinking, would look a small man beside me then." At this sally I had the ill-nature to suggest the constable could shoot Mouse. Whereupon Thady, with Hibernian readiness, replied, "Now I'm thinking the dog would bite first." [Sidenote: "A KITTY WREN, BEGORRA!"] A little later a bird flew across the path, upon which Thady cried out, "A Kitty wren, begorra!" and before I could stop him, had picked up a pebble to throw at a little golden-crested wren that I saw running up a spray of yew. "Stop, stop," I cried; "don't throw it." "Why not?" said Thady. "There's no law in England or Oireland against killin' a wren, beside"--and he what the Shropshire folks call "rippled over" with laughter--"'twould be a pretty shot." But I begged him to desist, and Thady, who is civility itself, or, as he quaintly expresses it, "born dutiful entirely to a leddy," dropped his stone and we walked on. After a few minutes' conversation, I discovered that Thady Malone was a naturalist of no mean repute, that he could imitate the call and various notes of most of the wild birds, and that he knew where to find their nests. "And if it's after such," he added gallantly, "that yer fancy takes yer, I'll lead yer and show yer the rarest birds that fly. Only wait another fortnight, pheasants, hawks, magpies, jays, blackcaps, blue-bonnets, Nanny washtails, heather lenties, red-poles, cutty wrens, corbie crows, Harry redcaps, and scores of others." Many of Thady's names I did not know, but Thady was graciously inclined, and assured me that he would "learn my leddyship the true names." "I don't call them after the books whatever," he asserted, "but same as the gipsy folks, and by the names known by the people that lived in London, and elsewhere, before us settled in Wenlock." So it was agreed that Thady and I were to spend a day in the woods. "Let it be Saturday," said Thady, authoritatively, "for then there's no school to plague the life out of a fellow. I can climb and you can cap," by which Thady meant that I was to carry the eggs. "Thady," I said, as we parted at Mrs. Harley's wicket, "you must come for me some Saturday. We will go into the woods, and I will bring out luncheon, and you shall climb the trees, whilst I and Bess will search the ground; but we will take no nests, only look at them and see the eggs." "Leave the eggs, and what for will her leddyship do that?" asked Thady, surprised. "That wud be like catching a hare and not finding it in the pot the night after." "Well," I remonstrated, "when you come with me, you must play my game of bird-nesting. Anyway, I can promise there will be nothing sick, or sorry, where we have gone." Thady at this laughed a little contemptuously, and a second later vanished behind a hedgerow, and I entered Mrs. Harley's cottage.