IN A PALACE OF REEDS. 129 
any great physical exertion, we spent in the 
most delightful way. Will was busy with The- 
ocritus, and kept up arunning comment on the 
oral translation to which he was treating me, 
while I, with leisurely care, was making a draw- 
ing in water-colors of a fine butcher-bird I had 
captured the day before. The wind came in 
desultory throbs through our mossy hall, fetch- 
ing up from the river a touch of dampness and 
the smell of water weeds. All the bird-voices 
were hushed, or, if heard at all, they wasted 
themselves in scattering squeaks and lazy 
dreamful flutings. Shut away from the sun, 
we were made aware of his extreme heat indi- 
rectly by the softened reflection from the water 
and by that dusky dryness always observable 
on the reed leaves and the blades of aquatic 
grass when a spring day burns like midsummer. 
We could hear the chattering cry of the king- 
fisher and an occasional plash, as the industri- 
ous bird plunged into the river after his prey. 
Diagonally across the stream, near the other 
bank, a small tree growing at the water’s edge, 
had caught a scraggily drift of logs and boughs, 
round which a brown scum, with huge pyra- 
mids of white foam, was clinging. Some green 
herons stood on projecting sticks, stretching 
their puffy necks, or silently sulking, with 
their sharp beaks elevated and their throats 
knotted into balls upon their breasts. Among 
some stones in a snallow place, a bright spot- 
ted water-snake lay in the ripple, holding up 
his angular head and darting his malign tongue 
in sheer wantonness of spirit. 
Those idyls, as Will read them, fell from 
his lips to immediately blend with the warm 
lull, the glowing dream of Nature. Those flow- 
9 
