ar enough to the
24th of June to make it risky. So, as "3.7" bent a tangled head over
the bonnet of his Daimler, I flung myself down on the level turf
beside him and stared across the road.

Behind us and on either side were clumps of gorse bushes, and beyond
them the immense level expanse of the open heath. Immediately in front
was the road, sunk a foot beneath the turf, which comes right up to
it, both on this side and that.

"Another piece of string, please," said "3.7," rummaging in my pockets
without waiting for an answer, "and a pencil, and----"

And then I saw it. On the farther side of the road there is a stretch
of short turf, some hundred yards wide; and beyond that an irregular
line of silver birches; and beyond that the blue of distant hills, for
the Common slopes down where the trees begin. Between the silvery wood
and the road, through the midst of the wide belt of turf, and parallel
with the Boundary, ran a river. There was nothing to be much surprised
at, for it was just the kind of river you would expect to see running
through the fields of fairyland. It was a river of grass.

It was the slender-stalked, tufted, not very tall, grey-headed grass
that grows quite generally in open country and wild places. But the
wind and the sun now turned it into a river which ran fast between its
banks of green, its waves silvery grey, quick-flowing waves, gleaming
and dappled, an endless succession. It flowed from somewhere out of
sight in the west, and disappeared to the east over the edge of the
great slope that brings you down to the woods, vanishing, to all
intents and purposes, over the edge of the world.

Without taking my eyes off this astonishing spectacle I stretched out
a hand and, catching "3.7" by the edge of his white smock, told him to
run across the road to the grass and--paddle in it. I said it was
better than motor cars. He made no comment on this but, after glancing
warily up and down the road (for he has been brought up in wholesome
awe of the entire tribe of automobiles), he crossed the Boundary, ran
across the turf and plunged up to his knees in the river.

I cannot be certain, but it is my considered opinion that Apollo
stopped his golden chariot for the space of a whole minute to look
down at the golden-haired boy wading in that noiseless, fast-flowing
river.

In another minute "3.7" was back at my side, both hands full of the
tufted grass he had pulled. I regret to say he tickled my ear