Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
page 16 of 242 (06%)
page 16 of 242 (06%)
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of it perhaps,--which has dripped and run through the heather in this
single day? It will sink into the ground, you know. And then what will become of it? Madam How will use it as an underground spade, just as she uses the rain (at least, when it rains too hard, and therefore the rain runs off the moor instead of sinking into it) as a spade above ground. Now come to the edge of the glen, and I will show you the mist that fell yesterday, perhaps, coming out of the ground again, and hard at work. You know of what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all these glens are. How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep rounded bank, almost like the crest of a wave--ready like a wave-crest to fall over, and as you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, where the soil is bare. Oh, yes; you are very fond of those banks. It is "awfully jolly," as you say, scrambling up and down them, in the deep heath and fern; besides, there are plenty of rabbit-holes there, because they are all sand; while there are no rabbit-holes on the flat above, because it is all gravel. Yes; you know all about it: but you know, too, that you must not go too far down these banks, much less roll down them, because there is almost certain to be a bog at the bottom, lying upon a gentle slope; and there you get wet through. All round these hills, from here to Aldershot in one direction, and from here to Windsor in another, you see the same shaped glens; the wave-crest along their top, and at the foot of the crest a line of springs which run out over the slopes, or well up through them in deep sand-galls, as you call them--shaking quagmires which are sometimes deep enough to swallow up a horse, and which you love to dance upon in summer time. Now the |
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