ASPETUCK 75 



listen. Tell-tale, tell-tale, the pebbles make me 

 call ; the pebbles that are the rock fragments I 

 have polished for my bed. 



" Listen ! as I pass the stony places you can 

 hear me singing tell-tale, tell-tale, for days to- 

 gether; but though I am a gossip, I am wise enough 

 never to tell all that I know, for some things be- 

 long to Silence ! " 



" Yes," answered Tommy- Anne ; " I can under- 

 stand what you are singing now, but all the spring 

 you have been roaring and scolding so, that I 

 could not make out a single word." 



" I am not answerable for what I do in the 

 spring," said the river, shrugging his shoulders 

 until they were covered with foam ; " in the spring 

 I am really not quite myself. A lot of strange 

 snow water comes racing down the hills into my 

 course, and I grow quite mixed up and I know 

 that I misbehave ; I always do. Only last month, 

 there was such a crowd of water tramps, all from 

 different places, trying to go to the sea by my 

 roadway, that we lifted the old turnpike bridge 

 on our shoulders and set it down again, above the 

 pond in the Miller's meadow. 



" Then, when we heard that the road-menders 

 were coming to try and take it back again, we 

 rushed down that night and gave the old thing a 



