Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. For some while a problem had confronted the inmates of the cottage, and now it was ever with them: the choice of a trade for Johnny. The situation of the cottage itself made the main difficulty. There was a walk of two miles to the nearest railway station, and then London was twelve miles off. It was in London that trades were learnt; but to get there? Here the family must stay, for here was the cottage, which cost no rent, for the old man had bought it with his little savings. Moreover, here also were the butterflies and the moths, which meant butter to the dry bread of the little pension; and here was the garden. To part with Johnny altogether was more than his mother could face, and, indeed, what was to pay for his lodging and keep? The moths and butterflies could be no living for Johnny. To begin with, though he was always ready to help in the hatching, killing, setting, and what not, he was no born insect hunter, like his grandfather; and then the old man had long realised that the forest was growing a poorer and poorer hunting ground each year,and must some day (after he was dead, he hoped) be no longer worth working. People were hard on the hawks, so that insect eating birds multiplied apace, and butterflies were fewer. And there was something else, or so it seemed some subtle influence from the great smoky province that lay to the south west. For London grew and grew, and washed nearer and still nearer its scummy edge of barren brickbats and clinkers. It had passed Stratford long since, and had nearly reached Leyton. And though Leyton was eight miles off, still the advancing town sent something before it an odour, a subtle principle that drove off the butterflies. The old man had once taken the Emperor Moth at Stratford, in a place long covered with a row of grim...
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