100 THE OPEN AIE. 



day would be fine and hot, and that was sufficient 

 for him, because his eyes had never been opened. 



The reaper had risen early to his labour, but the 

 birds had preceded him hours. Before the sun was 

 up the swallows had left their beams in the cow- 

 shed and twittered out into the air. The rooks and 

 wood-pigeons and doves had gone to the corn, the 

 blackbird to the stream, the finch to the hedgerow, 

 the bees to the heath on the hills, the humble- 

 bees to the clover in the plain. Butterflies rose 

 from the flowers by the footpath, and fluttered 

 before him to and fro and round and back again 

 to the place whence they had been driven. Gold- 

 finches tasting the first thistledown rose from the 

 corner where the thistles grew thickly. A hundred 

 sparrows came rushing up into the hedge, suddenly 

 filling the boughs with brown fruit ; they chirped 

 and quarrelled in their talk, and rushed away again 

 back to the corn as he stepped nearer. The boughs 

 were stripped of their winged brown berries as 

 quickly as they had grown. Starlings ran before 

 the cows feeding in the aftermath, so close to their 

 mouths as to seem in danger of being licked up by 

 their broad tongues. All creatures, from the tiniest 

 insect upward, were in reality busy under that 

 curtain of white-heat haze. It looked so still, so 

 quiet, from afar ; entering it and passing among the 

 fields, all that lived was found busy at its long day's 

 work. Eoger did not interest himself in these things, 

 in the wasps that left the gate as he approached 

 they were making papier-mache from the wood of 

 the top bar, in the bright poppies brushing against 



