g the
edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb,
tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not slow to follow.
Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its
place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident and delaying
dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if
string-music had announced it in stately chords that strayed into a
gavotte, that June at last was here. One member of the company was still
awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the
ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping
summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, debonair and
odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his place in the group,
then the play was ready to begin.

And what a play it had been! Drowsy animals, snug in their holes
while wind and rain were battering at their doors, recalled still
keen mornings, an hour before sunrise, when the white mist, as yet
undispersed, clung closely along the surface of the water; then the
shock of the early plunge, the scamper along the bank, and the radiant
transformation of earth, air, and water, when suddenly the sun was with
them again, and grey was gold and colour was born and sprang out of the
earth once more. They recalled the languorous siesta of hot mid-day,
deep in green undergrowth, the sun striking through in tiny golden
shafts and spots; the boating and bathing of the afternoon, the rambles
along dusty lanes and through yellow cornfields; and the long, cool
evening at last, when so many threads were gathered up, so many
friendships rounded, and so many adventures planned for the morrow.
There was plenty to talk about on those short winter days when the
animals found themselves round the fire; still, the Mole had a good deal
of spare time on his hands, and so one afternoon, when the Rat in his
arm-chair before the blaze was alternately dozing and trying over rhymes
that wouldn't fit, he formed the resolution to go out by himself and
explore the Wild Wood, and perhaps strike up an acquaintance with Mr.
Badger.

It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he
slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare
and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen
so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter
day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber an