six in the morning
Up there the blue-bells lie in sheets of mauve , and the cuckoo is busy . I rarely see him ; but his three notes fill the hot noon and evening . When he spits -LRB- says the gamekeeper again -RRB- it is time to be sheep-shearing . My talk with the gamekeeper is usually held at six in the morning , when he comes down the lane and I am stepping across to test the water in Scarlet 's Well . This well bubbles up under a low vault scooped in the bank by the footpath and hung with hart 's - tongue ferns . It has two founts , close together ; but whereas one of them oozes only , the other is bubbling perennially , and , as near as I have observed , keeps always the same . Its specific gravity is that of distilled water -- 1.000 ° ; and though , to be sure , it upset me , three weeks back , by flying up to 1.005 ° , I think that must have come from the heavy thunderstorms and floods of rain that lately visited us and no doubt imported some ingredients that had no business there .