Then his loyal heart
seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treachery.
'Why do you ever come back, then, at all?' he demanded of the swallows
jealously. 'What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
country?'
'And do you think,' said the first swallow, 'that the other call is
not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of
haymaking, and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of
the perfect Eaves?'
'Do you suppose,' asked the second one, that you are the only living
thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo's note
again?'
'In due time,' said the third, 'we shall be home-sick once more for
quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But
to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our
blood dances to other music.'
They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their
intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted
walls.
Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose
gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards
the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards--his
simple horizon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind
which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know.
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