beverage not only all the abundance of the brook (whose brilliance might
taste of men), but also a little spring of their own which came out of
its hole like a rabbit; and then for scenery all the sea, with strange
things running over it, as well as a great park of their own having
countless avenues of rush, ragwort, and thistle-stump--where would they
have deserved to be, if they had not been contented? Content they
were, and even joyful at the proper time of day. Joyful in the morning,
because the sun was come again; joyful in the middle day to see how well
the world went; and in the evening merry with the tricks of their own
shadows.

Quite fifteen stepping-stones stepped up--if you counted three that were
made of wood--to soothe the dignity of the brook in its last fresh-water
moments, rather than to gratify the dry-skin'd soles of gentlefolk. For
any one, with a five-shilling pair of boots to terminate in, might skip
dry-footed across the sandy purlings of the rivulet. And only when a
flood came down, or the head of some springtide came up, did any but
playful children tread the lichened cracks of the stepping-stones. And
nobody knew this better than Horatia Dorothy Darling.

The bunnies who lived to the west of the brook had reconciled their
minds entirely now to the rising of that boat among them. At first it
made a noise, and scratched the sand, and creaking things came down to
it; and when the moon came through its ribs in the evening, tail was
the quarter to show to it. But as it went on naturally growing, seldom
appearing to make much noise, unless there was a man very near it, and
even then keeping him from doing any harm--outside the disturbance that
he lives in--without so much as a council called, they tolerated this
encroachment. Some of the bolder fathers came and sat inside to
consider it, and left their compliments all round to the masters of the