It is as if the men and horses worked for the
birds.
The horse-chestnut trees in the narrow copse bloom; the bees are humming
everywhere and summer is at hand. Presently the brown cockchafers will
come almost like an army of locusts, as suddenly appearing without a
sign. They seem to be particularly numerous where there is much maple in
the hedges.
Resting now on the sward by the stream--contracted in seeming by the
weeds and flags and fresh sedges--there comes the distant murmur of
voices and the musical laugh of girls. The ear tries to distinguish the
words and gather the meaning; but the syllables are intertangled--it is
like listening to a low sweet song in a language all unknown. This is
the water falling gently over the mossy hatch and splashing faintly on
the stones beneath; the blue dragon-flies dart over the smooth surface
or alight on a broad leaf--these blue dragon-flies when thus resting
curl the tail upwards.
Farther up above the mere there is a spot where the pool itself ends, or
rather imperceptibly disappears among a vast mass of aquatic weeds. To
these on the soft oozy mud succeed acres of sedge and rush and great
turfs of greyish grass. Low willows are scattered about, and alder at
the edge and where the ground is firmer. This is the home of the
dragon-flies, of the coots, whose white bald foreheads distinguish them
at a distance, and of the moorhens.
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