is under water. How it sparkles in the sun."

"John, you like looking at anything pretty."

"Ah! don't I!" cried he, with his whole heart. My heart leaped too,
to see him so happy.

"You can't think how fine this is from my window; I have watched it
for a week. Every morning the water seems to have made itself a
fresh channel. Look at that one, by the willow-tree--how savagely it
pours!"

"Oh, we at Norton Bury are used to floods."

"Are they ever very serious?"

"Have been--but not in my time. Now, John, tell me what you have
been doing all winter."

It was a brief and simple chronicle--of hard work, all day over, and
from the Monday to the Saturday--too hard work to do anything of
nights, save to drop into the sound, dreamless sleep of youth and
labour.

"But how did you teach yourself to read and add up, then?"

"Generally at odd minutes going along the road. It's astonishing
what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really
sets about it. And then I had Sunday afternoons besides. I did not
think it wrong--"