Indeed I hardly know how we
could get as far as Reading; for all the world is in the hay-field, and
even the old horse must go thither too, and take his turn at the
hay-cart. Well, the rocks have been where they are for many a year, and
they will wait our leisure patiently enough: but Midsummer and the hay-
field will not wait. Let us take what God gives when He sends it, and
learn the lesson that lies nearest to us. After all, it is more to my
old mind, and perhaps to your young mind too, to look at things which are
young and fresh and living, rather than things which are old and worn and
dead. Let us leave the old stones, and the old bones, and the old
shells, the wrecks of ancient worlds which have gone down into the
kingdom of death, to teach us their grand lessons some other day; and let
us look now at the world of light and life and beauty, which begins here
at the open door, and stretches away over the hay-fields, over the woods,
over the southern moors, over sunny France, and sunnier Spain, and over
the tropic seas, down to the equator, and the palm-groves of the eternal
summer. If we cannot find something, even at starting from the open
door, to teach us about Why and How, we must be very short-sighted, or
very shallow-hearted.

There is the old cock starling screeching in the eaves, because he wants
to frighten us away, and take a worm to his children, without our finding
out whereabouts his hole is. How does he know that we might hurt him?
and how again does he not know that we shall not hurt him? we, who for
five-and-twenty years have let him and his ancestors build under those
eaves in peace? How did he get that quantity of half-wit, that sort of
stupid cunning, into his little brain, and yet get no more? And why (for
this is a question of Why, and not of How) does he labour all day long,
hunting for worms and insects for his children, while his wife nurses
them in the nest? Why, too, did he help her to build that nest with toil
and care this spring, for the sake of a set of nestlings who can be of no
gain or use to him, but only take the food out of his mouth? Simply out
of--what shall I call it, my child?--Love; that same sense of love and
duty, coming surely from that one Fountain of all duty and all love,
which makes your father work for you. That the mother should take care
of her young, is wonderful enough; but that (at least among many birds)
the father should help likewise, is (as you wi