She was on closest visiting terms with innumerable broods of
newly-hatched birdlings--knew them, indeed, while they were still but
eggs--delighted in them when they were as yet but skin and
mouth--rejoiced in their featherings and flyings. Even baby cuckoos were
a joy to her, though, on their foster-mothers' accounts she resented the
thriftlessness of their parents, and grew tired each year of their
monotonous call which ceased not day or night. But of the larks never,
for their songs seemed to her of heaven, while the cuckoos were of
earth. The gulls, too, were somewhat difficult from the friendly point
of view, but she lay for hours overlooking their domestic arrangements
and envying the wonders of their matchless flight.

And down below the cliffs what marvels she discovered!--marvels which in
many cases the Vicar was fain to content himself with at second hand,
since closer acquaintance seemed to him to involve undoubted risk to
limb if not to life. Little Nance, indeed, hopped down the seamed cliffs
like a rock pipit, with never a thought of the dangers of the passage,
and he would stand and watch her with his heart in his mouth, and only
shake his grey head at her encouraging assertions that it was truly
truly as easy as easy. For he felt certain that even if he got down he
would never get up again. And so, when the triumphant shout from below
told him she was safely landed, he would wave a grateful hand and get
back from the edge and seat himself securely on a rock, till the rosy
face came laughing up between him and the shimmering sea, with trophy of
weed or shell or crystal quartz, and he would tell her all he knew about
them, and she would try to tell him of all he had missed by not coming
down.

There were wonderful great basins down there, all lined with pink and
green corallines, and full of the loveliest weeds and anemones and other