In these meadows, in the grounds which their owners never used at night, and in Our Country, Philip and I spent really a great deal of time, fishing, birds-nesting, and trying to shoot birds with cross-bow, pistol, or home-made gun. There were intervals of school, and of football and cricket, but these in memory do not amount to more than the towns of England do in comparison with the country. As on the map the towns are but blots and spots on the country, so the school-hours were embedded, almost buried away, in the holidays, official, semi-official, and altogether unofficial. Philip and I were together during most of them; even the three principal long holidays of the year were often shared, either in Wales with some of Philip’s people, or at Lydiard Constantine, in Wiltshire, with my aunt Rachel. CHAPTER VII WOOL-GATHERING AND LYDIARD CONSTANTINE One day at Abercorran House I heard Aurelius, Mr Morgan, and Mr Torrance in the Library, talking about wool-gathering. “Since Jessie told us about that river in Essex with the Welsh name,” said Mr Morgan, laughing, “we have travelled from Gwithavon to Battersea Park Road and a fishmonger’s advertisement. Such are the operations of the majestic intellect. How did we get all that way? Do you suppose the cave-men were very different, except that they did not trouble about philology and would have eaten their philologers, while they did without fishmongers because fish were caught to eat, not to sell, in those days?” “Well!” said Aurelius, “we could not live if we had nothing in common with the cave-men. A man who was a mere fishmonger or a mere philologer could not live a day without artificial aid. Scratch a philologer sufficiently hard and you will find a sort of a cave-man.” “I think,” continued Mr Morgan, “that we ought to prove our self-respect by going soberly back on our steps to see what by-ways took us out of Gwithavon to this point.” “I’m not afraid of you at that game,” said Aurelius. “I have often played it during church services, or rather after them. A church service needs no further defence if it can provide a number of boys with a chance of good wool-gathering.” “Very true,” said Mr Torrance, who always agreed with Aurelius when it was possible. A fancy had struck him, and instead of turning it into a sonnet he said: “I like to think that the original wool-gatherers were men whose taste it was to wander the mountains and be before-hand with the nesting birds, gathering stray wool from the rocks and thorns, a taste that took them into all sorts of wild new places without over-loading them with wool, or with profit or applause.”