He plunged
in, and washed the dreams from his eyes with a dive, and a swim under
water. Then he rose to the surface and swam slowly about under the
overhanging willows, and earthy banks hollowed by the river's flow into
cold damp caves, up into the brown shadows of which the water cast a
flickering shimmer. Then he dressed himself, and lay down on the meadow
grass, each blade of which shadowed its neighbour in the slant
sunlight. Cool as it still was with the coldness of the vanished
twilight, it yet felt warm to his bare feet, fresh from the waters that
had crept down through the night from the high moor-lands. He fell fast
asleep, and the sheep came and fed about him, as if he had been one of
themselves. When he woke, the sun was high; and when he reached the
house, he found his mother and Kate already seated at breakfast--Kate
in the prettiest of cotton dresses, looking as fresh and country-like
as the morning itself. The window was open, and through the encircling
ivy, as through a filter of shadows, the air came fresh and cool.
Beyond the shadow of the house lay the sunshine, a warm sea of brooding
glory, of still power; not the power of flashing into storms of
splendour beneath strange winds, but of waking up and cherishing to
beauty the shy life that lay hidden in all remotest corners of the
teeming earth.
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