Agnes Grey / Агнес Грей. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The garden was a large one, and tastefully laid out; besides several splendid dahlias, there were some other fine flowers still in bloom: but my companion would not give me time to examine them: I must go with him, across the wet grass, to a remote sequestered corner, the most important place in the grounds, because it contained his garden. There were two round beds, stocked with a variety of plants. In one there was a pretty little rose-tree. I paused to admire its lovely blossoms.

�Oh, never mind that!’ said he, contemptuously. �That’s only Mary Ann’s garden; look, THIS is mine.’

After I had observed every flower, and listened to a disquisition on every plant, I was permitted to depart; but first, with great pomp, he plucked a polyanthus and presented it to me, as one conferring a prodigious favour. I observed, on the grass about his garden, certain apparatus of sticks and corn, and asked what they were.

�Traps for birds.

�Why do you catch them?’

�Papa says they do harm.’

�And what do you do with them when you catch them?’

�Different things. Sometimes I give them to the cat; sometimes I cut them in pieces with my penknife; but the next, I mean to roast alive.’

�And why do you mean to do such a horrible thing?’

�For two reasons: first, to see how long it will live – and then, to see what it will taste like.’

�But don’t you know it is extremely wicked to do such things? Remember, the birds can feel as well as you; and think, how would you like it yourself?’

�Oh, that’s nothing! I’m not a bird, and I can’t feel what I do to them.

�But you will have to feel it some time, Tom: you have heard where wicked people go to when they die; and if you don’t leave off torturing innocent birds, remember, you will have to go there, and suffer just what you have made them suffer.

�Oh, pooh! I shan’t. Papa knows how I treat them, and he never blames me for it: he says it is just what he used to do when he was a boy. Last summer, he gave me a nest full of young sparrows, and he saw me pulling off their legs and wings, and heads, and never said anything; except that they were nasty things, and I must not let them soil my trousers: end Uncle Robson was there too, and he laughed, and said I was a fine boy.