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 corn-fields; 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 and seemed
to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries, and all
hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in
leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically,
and seemed to ask him to ove