[First in the Field by George Manville Fenn]@TWC D-Link book
First in the Field

CHAPTER ONE
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None of that.

Here, carry these." He thrust the nest of young thrushes into the boy's hand, and forced him to proceed, limping heavily.
"Look at the little humbug," cried Green, as they all went on, with Dominic Braydon hanging down his head and gazing hard at the ground to keep from darting indignant glances at the tyrant who had bullied and insulted him till it had been almost beyond bearing.

He felt a choking sensation in the throat, and an intense longing to do something; but his ways were peaceful, and Green, was heavy, big, and strong.

In addition, he was cock of the school, to whom every one had yielded for a long time past; and Dominic Braydon had still fresh in his memory that day when he had resisted a piece of tyranny and fought at the far end of the school garden, where an unlucky blow on the bridge of the nose had half blinded him and made him an easy victim to the enemy, who administered a severe drubbing and procured for his adversary a birching for fighting--it was before caning days--and a long series of impositions for obstinacy, a trait the doctor said that he absolutely abhorred--Dominic's obstinacy consisting in a stubborn refusal to confess who had beaten him.

This his schoolfellows called honourable; but Green had other opinions, and set it down to the fear of getting another thrashing for telling tales.
But Green was not quite correct.
And so on this bright spring half-holiday the boys went on along the side of the common toward the dense furze clump, Green hectoring, throwing stones at everything he saw, from the donkeys and geese to the yellow-hammers which flitted along the hedge, stopping now and then to twitter out their quaint little song about "a little bit o' bread and no cheese," and looking as much like canaries as they could as they perched upon some twig.
"I'll give you a bit o' cheese and no bread," cried Green, as he hurled stone after stone, but fortunately with the worst of aim.


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