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She was a little frightened of the birds, of the soft stroke of their wings in the air, and the flocks in which they travelled, settling suddenly, to rise again when she sprang out with her rattle. Suppose, that, instead of flying away, they flew into her face! . . . Every day she thought they might. She did not know that it was different flocks of them that came. She thought it was always the same flock—the same sparrows, the same jackdaws, the same finches—and that they must soon come to know her well and be no longer afraid of her and her rattle. She did not like her job of scaring birds; she was happier stoning or weeding. But because she was so little, and slow at filling her sack or basket, she was given more scaring than stoning or weeding to do.

Day after day she went up to the big ten-acre field at Beggars Bush, and sat herself down with her rattle. She wore an old brown cotton frock, the colour of earth, for the gay pink and blue had long grown too small for her. She would play games and tell tales to herself, to pass the time, and drive away the fears that lurked in the field corners, and sometimes came rushing out to her on wings. The source of both her games and her tales was the same, the Book she heard read on Sundays by the cowman of Horn Reed.