JUNE 



The Mill and the Fish A Woodman s Hint A Butterfly 

 Tryst A Wagtail Drama Haysel and Haystack 



I. 



,LD but not unhappy things enclose the stream 

 [where it leaves the village. One is an antique inn 

 land cottage, whose walls directly buttress the 

 water ; one is a wall supporting the garden of a fifteenth- 

 century house. Though thoroughly native, the place 

 suggests a famous Virgilean line : 



Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros. 



These things are still beautiful, and speak the peaceful 

 continuity of English villages. The charm of the ages 

 still belongs to them ; and is worth savouring before we 

 come to later changes. Though the road crosses in front 

 of the mill, and becomes more noisy and populous, at 

 least on Saturday and Sunday, most of the sorts of crea 

 ture that liked this bit of river, say in 1066, still like it. 

 From the garden side, a pair of grey wagtails dance and 

 hover in the air, as brightly as humming-birds in South 

 America. Are any of our small birds more tropical and 

 gayer in appearance ? Though rare in the neighbour 

 hood, and not often seen in Eastern England by the 

 general populace, they keep a particular fondness for this 

 populous place. The little grebes that we call dabchicks, 

 though shy and furtive in all their ways (even to the 

 careful covering of their eggs with a reed counterpane), 

 still sidle along the wall and slip under overhanging 



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