However, Washed His Hand And Bound It
Up, And Started Out Again.
(Chuckle.) Hadn't gone very far, and was
getting through a hedge, and dalled if he didn't fall into the pond,
flop!
(Chuckle.) I suppose he didn't like it, for he never said nothing
about the mounds in his book when it come out - left'em out altogether.'
This pond still exists, and Mr. Nestor Hay had noted a curious thing
about it. Across the middle of the pond a tree had fallen; it was just on
a level with the surface of the water. A pair of water-rats always ate
their food on this tree. They would go out into the grass of the meadow,
bite off the vegetation that suited their taste, and carry it back in
their mouths to the tree, and there eat it in safety, with water, as it
were, all round them like a moat. This they did a hundred times - in fact,
every day. 'But,' said Mr. Hay, 'you can't watch nothing now a minute
without some great lout coming along with a stale baccy pipe in his
mouth, making the air stink; they spoils everything, these here
half-towny fellows; everybody got a neasty stale pipe in their mouths,
and they gets over the hedges anywhere, and disturbs everything.' It is
common on the banks of a stream or a pond to see half a dozen of these
little beaver-like water-voles out feeding in the grass, and they eat it
when they find it. At this particular pond the two rats diverged from the
custom of their race, and always took their food to a place of safety
first. If he is alarmed the water-rat instantly dives, and his idea of
security is a spot where he can drop like a stone under the surface
without a moment's reflection. Mr. Hay could not understand why the
water-rats were so timid at this pond till he recollected that the
preceding summer two schoolboys used to get up in an oak that overhung
the water, each with a catapult, and, firing bullets from these
india-rubber weapons on the water-rats underneath, slew nearly every one
of them. The few left had evidently learnt extreme caution from the
misfortune of their friends, and no longer trusted themselves away from
the water, into which they could slip at the movement of a shadow.
Mr. Hay disliked to see the slouching fellows making tracks across his
fields, every one of which he looked on with as much jealousy as if it
had been a garden - a wild garden they were too, strewn sometimes with the
white cotton of the plane tree, hung about with roses and sweet with
mowing grass. Those who love fields and every briar in the hedge dislike
to see them entered irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself
even of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest; it jars
upon me to see nature profaned.
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