246 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



wriggle of his body just caught where a sunbeam pierces 

 the water below the boat. 



"It's brother and sister to me," said the Water Rat 

 in "The Wind hi the Willows," speaking, you will re- 

 call, of his land below the river bank, "and aunts and 

 company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. 

 It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it 

 hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't 

 know is not worth knowing." The Rat was one of 

 those excellent good fellows who have passed the age of 

 adventuring, and settled down to a kind of glowing 

 and enthusiastic content with then- chosen surroundings. 

 A bit of a poet, too, was the Rat, glorifying his river. 



But there are days when all our sympathies are 

 with Ratty. It is the full tide of August now, and the 

 river garden is at its height. Two days of recent rain 

 have filled the channel and flushed the swales. Yester- 

 day we spent a long, lazy afternoon voyaging in this 

 other-world so close to us, yet so far removed, and came 

 back as from a dream. A soft haze silvered the bound- 

 ing hills and lazy white clouds looked at themselves in 

 the water. Mild water peppers waved their finger- 

 like blooms above us upon the bends; the blue vervains 

 held up their purple spikes; where a chunk of bank 

 thatch had fallen almost into the water, a tiny garden of 

 forget-me-nots was nodding at its reflection; on a green 

 eyeot in midstream, wild sunflowers and jewel weed 

 and pink thistles grew together; and everywhere be- 



