mote even from twittering warblers and the
distant harvest cries, Michael and Alan drowsed away the afternoon. They
scarcely spoke, for they were too well contented with the languorous
weather. Sometimes one of them would clothe a dream with a boy's slang,
and that was all. Then, when the harvesters had long gone home and when
the last cow was stalled, and when the rabbits were scampering by the
edge of the sloping woodlands, Michael and Alan would unmoor their canoe
and glide homeward with the stream. Through the deepening silence their
boat would swing soundlessly past the purple loosestrife and the creamy
meadowsweet, past the yellow loosestrife and scented rushes and the
misted blue banks of cranesbill, past the figwort and the little yellow
waterlilies, while always before their advance the voles plumped into
the water one by one and in hawthorn bushes the wings of roosting birds
fluttered. Around them on every side crept the mist in whose silver
muteness they landed to gather white mushrooms. Home they would come
drenched with dew, and arm in arm they would steal up the dusky garden
to the rose-red lamps and twinkling golden candlelight of Cobble Place.

In the actual week before the wedding Michael and Alan were kept far too
busy to explore streams. They ran from one end of Basingstead Minor to
the other and back about a dozen times a day. They left instructions
with various old ladies in the village at whose cottages guests were
staying. They carried complicated floral messages from Mrs. Carthew to
the Vicar and equally complicated floral replies from the Vicar to Mrs.
Carthew. They were allowed to drive the aged dun pony to meet Mr. and
Mrs. Merivale on the day before the wedding and had great jokes with Mr.
Merivale because he would say that it was an underdone pony and because
he would not believe that dun was spelt d-u-n. As for the wedding-day
itself, it was for Michael and Alan one long message interrupted only by
an argument with the cook with regard to the amount of rice they had a
right to take.

Michael felt very shy at the reception and managed to avoid calling Miss
Carthew Mrs. Ross; although Alan distinctly addressed her once with
great boldness as Aunt Maud, for which he was violently punched in the
ribs by Michael, as with stifled laughter they both rushed headlong from
the room. However, they came back to hear old Major Carthew proposing
the bride and bridegroom's health and plunged themselves in