were told such
bloodcurdling tales when we sat up at night. Hoo! I've seen enough:
let's get down again, quick!

The brook runs below. Alders and ash, bending forward on either bank,
mingle their branches and form a verdant arch. At their feet, behind
a porch of great twisted roots, are watery caverns prolonged by gloomy
corridors. On the threshold of these fastnesses shimmers a glint of
sunshine, cut into ovals by the leafy sieve above.

This is the haunt of the red-necktied minnows. Come along very gently,
lie flat on the ground and look. What pretty little fish they are, with
their scarlet throats! Clustering side by side, with their heads turned
against the stream, they puff their cheeks out and in, rinsing their
mouths incessantly. To keep their stationary position in the running
water, they need naught but a slight quiver of their tail and of the fin
on their back. A leaf falls from the tree. Whoosh! The whole troop has
disappeared.

On the other side of the brook is a spinney of beeches, with smooth,
straight trunks, like pillars. In their majestic, shady branches sit
chattering crows, drawing from their wings old feathers replaced by new.
The ground is padded with moss. At one's first step on the downy carpet,
the eye is caught by a mushroom, not yet full-spread and looking like
an egg dropped there by some vagrant hen. It is the first that I have
picked, the first that have I turned round and round in my fingers,
inquiring into its structure with that vague curiosity which is the
first awakening of observation.

Soon, I find others, differing in size, shape and color. It is a
real treat for my prentice eyes. Some are fashioned like bells, like
extinguishers, like cups; some are drawn out into spindles, hollowed
into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. I come upon some that are broken
and are weeping milky tears; I step on some that, instantly, become
tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are crumbling into rot and
swarming with worms. Others, shaped like pears, are dry and open at the
top with a round hole, a sort of chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes
when I prod their under side with my finger. These are the most curious.
I fill my pockets with them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I
exhaust the contents, which are at last reduced to a kind of tinder.

What fun I had in that delightful spinney! I returned to it many a time
after my first find; and here, in the company of the crows, I rece