“Drink? aye; and that one yonder swimmit into the middle of the pond on Tooting Bec the other day.”
This was startling, and contrary to all that one has observed among our Southern animals, so that I could only say, “What! do sheep swim?”
“I have seen a sheep come down by the fence fra the hills and go straight for the stream, swim it, and get to the other side. And when we fetch them down at the end of the season we have to watch to see that some of them do na swim over the ferry. I’ve seen them do it.”
“That might be a hundred yards across, I suppose?”
“A hunner yards, a hunner yards! ‘Twould be a mile across and I’ve seen a sheep swim across like a dowg, with only its nose oot of the water.”
“Hame wi’ ye. Ga roond, man, ga roond,” was again the cry. When we reached the enclosure, some of the sheep, as we expected, slaked themselves, but others just lay down to rest for the night. The sheep-pen was near the shepherd’s seasonal home, and the reader may care to know something about this hostel.
It was an ancient, but serviceable dwelling, not very smart on the exterior, but comfortable within, where there were two beds. The almost prehistoric house once went by the legal name of a “metropolitan stage carriage,” but it was also known as a hackney coach, and nowadays it would be a plain “bus.” This type of vehicle, long since disused, plied, so far as I gather, chiefly over the London bridges more . . .