" Among the Exhibits . . ."
Listen ! Do you remember a day, an April day, when we walked into the heart of a forest ? We have known many April days—for God is very good—and many forests, but I think you have not forgotten that forest or that day—a day to be marked with a stone of the purest white. .
First we found a bog. The bog-earth lay stretched out like a carpet of old black velvet that with the years had faded to the colour of well-bUrnt cork. Scattered all over it, at just jumping distance apart, were islands of sea-green jade—but yes, truly !—and though it had been easy to walk round the bog you thought it the better part to cross it perilously, from patch to patch of jade that was but bog-moss in disguise. So I took your hand to help you, and you jumped, and laughed. Sometimes you jumped short, and laughed the louder, and sank ankle- deep in the bog, and the hem of your dress (it was a very long time ago) was mired with mud.
And in the middle of the bog, behold !—a colony of sundews. What colour were they when they were not green ? Can you remember ? I can,—they were crab- colour, exactly the colour of the little, round, red-brown kind of crabs that have some of their legs flat and with a fringe of hair all round the edges—the kind that we call &rules. Indeed, I think that sundews are very like crabs. If one saw a sundew scrambling down a rock by the margin of the sea one would be sure it was a crab. If one found a crab—a crab, I mean, of that kind—sitting -beside an island of jade in the middle of a bog, what would it look like more than a sundew-?_ Nothing that I can think of.
So we crossed the bog, and by its farther edge we found a stream—a very baby of a stream that ran bab- blingly along its little bed but held an untellable multi. tude of minnows. At a narrow place I made a dam with bits of stick and rotten leaves, and at another narrow place, two yards down stream, you, also, made a dam, and lo ! between the dams, about a million minnows. Up stream and down they flashed, till the water was whipped to a turmoil. They pretended to be flying-fish, and when they fell back upon the surface they made a tinkly, silvery sound that was, you said, the sound of minnows' laughter.. And you laughed back at them, and broke the dams down, and set them free; Then we crossed the stream, you and I, at a stride apiece, and gained the road that bordered it-a real road though still young, a road with wheel ruts that must lead to somewhere. Do you remember how we wandered along the road, whose miles, for me, were hidden by the magic of your laughter, until we saw smoke rising in the air from a cottage that had hitherto been screened from us by the low and woody hills ? I went to the cottage and bought a jugful of milk from the woman that owned it. Then we Tound a sheltered place on the sunny side of the hill, where-the grass was short, and fine, and dry ; and I made a couch for you with last year's bracken fronds, and there we did eat sausage rolls and apple turnovers that I had carried in an old fishing bag. And when we had put from us the desire of food and drink you slept awhfle—" two little minutes " you called it, but when you woke it was high afternoon, and the road was calling.
As we went the road began to grow up. It was no longer rutty with the twin tracks of cart-wheels. It grew harder, broader, less uneven. Wayside trees appeared—poplar and ash and oak ; and because there ran along one side a ditch—a brook rather—that grew as it went, fed by many little hilLside. streams, there was a lower growth of alder, and of willows whose orange stems were reflected in the slow-moving water.
Do you remember how the road wound in . and out through the woods, and how we tried to guess what might be hidden by every bend ? And all the guesses were wrong, and all the time you laughed—until we came upon . what shall we call it ? . . . until we came upon one of God's Miracles. Then you did not laugh. You cried.
It was a very small thing. God's Miracles often are. It was only a little brown bird, greyish beneath, yellow- legged, that sat on a willow branch over the water and poured out his heart in love lyrics to his lady.
We came upon him suddenly, as we turned a bend of the road, but he was not frightened. On tip-toe, hand in hand, we crept towards him, till almost we could have touched the branch upon which he rested. Yet he was unperturbed. He sang on, pouring out music that was like old mountain-honey that has lain long in an earthen jar in the sun ; music that rose to Heaven and then rained down on earth again ; that filled the air until the air was heavy with its sweetness, as is the air in groves of bitter-orange trees in flower ; that fell upon the water of the brook and mingled with it, and with the brook was carried to the river, and with the river to the sea. Since then you have known why rivers sing deep- voiced chorales through the night. It is because the streams have borne to them the songs of all the nightin-
gales.
And you ? You stood there entranced, almost afraid to breathe, lost to everything about you save only to the wonder of that wild, free, passionate love-song that filled your heart to overflowing. Ali, yes, I know—for when I dared to look at you I saw its overflow that trembled on your eyelids.
A moment or two we stood there, we who had laughed loud the long day through but laughed no longer. Then fearfully we stole away, without a word; hushed to silence in the evening by the divine beauty of a wild bird's Song. _ (Meng the exhibits were two caged nightingahm(Daity Press). Marro. PicnEun.
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