to the light dripping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle
rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their
happy whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice
heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never
knew she had a bite till Tom told her; but she liked fishing very
much.

It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down
together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them;
they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always
be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of
each other. And the mill with its booming; the great chestnut-tree
under which they played at houses; their own little river, the Ripple,
where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the
water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds,
which she forgot and dropped afterward; above all, the great Floss,
along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing
spring-tide, the awful Eagle, come up like a hungry monster, or to see
the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man, these
things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were
at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot of the globe; and
Maggie, when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which
there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures
by the Great Ash.

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in
believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would
always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth
so well if we had had no childhood in it,--if it were not the earth
where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to