"And it does wag its tail all the time," says the Elf. It really does. We see it flit about the shores of the stream, first a little this way, and then a little that, and every time it perches its tail wags up and down, up and down, like a tiny see-saw that has lost its other end.
Sometimes late in the summer we see yellow wagtails by the stream, and they are even prettier than the grey ones, the very daintiest of little fairy birds. But in autumn, both the grey wagtails and the yellow ones fly away over seas like the swallows, and we do not meet them by the stream side till next year.
One month in every year the Imp and the Elf and I go to stay in a farmhouse close by the shores of a lake, that is bigger than the biggest pond you have ever seen. Out of the lake flows a river, that is bigger than the biggest stream. But when we go there we always feel very much like we do when we go over the common to the duck pond, or follow the beck from the woodland to the valley. Only, now, instead of lying on the bank at the side of the water, we go in a boat, and row out with the water lapping round us. It is as if we were in an enormous ship of our own, and quite safe, for the boat is so broad in the beam that not even the Imp or the Elf could tumble out if they tried.
Of course we are pirates, and Sir Francis Drakes, and vikings, and other sea rovers, from time to time. I often find that I have been a villainous pirate mate, when, for all I knew, I had been peaceably reading a book in the stern, and we none of us know when we set out in the morning what manner of gay adventures we shall fashion for ourselves upon the water. But, if I were to tell you about all that, I should have no room left in which to write of the water folk, and that would never do.
This is a chapter mainly about the lake things, and they are very like the pond and stream people, only bigger. You remember the little eels we used to find in the stream, clustered like massing black hair below the stones in the running water? Often, when we are floating on the lake, where the bottom is sandy, and not so deep that we cannot see it from the boat, we look over the gunwale and see long brown slimy eels, with silver bellies, twisting along the ground below. Sometimes we drop a worm exactly over an eel, and watch it fall like a curling coral in the water until the eel shoots at it, and gulps it in. Eels are really very like water snakes, but they are fish, with fins just like the trout, and funny little snoutheads, that make us think of pike. Pike are the ugliest and wickedest-looking of all the fish. Big and hungry they are, with evil eyes and long snouts, and mouths set full of teeth that point back down their throats, so that if a little trout or a hand once got inside it has not much chance of escape. The pike lie under the thick weeds round the shores of the lake, and among those rushes that rise out of the water like a forest of green spears. Then when a shoal of big minnows or small perch float by the pike darts out, and there is one perch or one minnow the less in the frightened shoal of little fish. Pike do not like perch very much, because a swallowed perch means a sore pike. For those gay perch with their scarlet fins and golden bodies barred with olive green are not defenceless at all. The fin that runs down their backs is built on firm, sharp spikes that they can lift when they want, and no perch is mild enough to let himself be swallowed without lifting his spines and tearing the throat of the swallower.
As we row on down the lake, watching the reflection of the boat rocking in the ripples, and the reflections of the hills and the trees on the shore of the lake we sometimes hear a long whistling cry, and a curlew swings high over our heads from one side of the valley to the other, like a pendulum-bob without a string, his long curved beak stretched out far before him. And sometimes when the weather is going to be stormy we hear a shrill shriek repeated again and again, and see a white cloud of seagulls lift from the marshy shores and flap away and back and settle again. And more than once we have seen wild duck, and a drake in a gorgeous shimmer of colour fly across the marshland by the head of the river. Half-way down the lake there is a little rocky island, where we have often seen the yellow wagtails, and on a promontory opposite a kingfisher has his nest in a deep hole in the rock. We row the boat close up to the nest, and look at the pile of fishbones outside the hole. The Kingfisher is a fisher as well as a king, and lives on the fish that he catches. It is fine to see him fly across in the sunlight from the rock to island, from the island to the rock, "Just like a rainbow without any rain," as the Elf says, for he is the most gaily coloured of the birds. "Because he is the king," says the Imp. And indeed his kingly robes are very splendid—blue, and green, and red, and white, and orange—as fine a cloak for a monarch as you could wish to see.
There is another fishing bird whom we are always glad to see. He is bigger than I do not know how many Kingfishers put together, and though he is not brightly coloured he is very beautiful. He is a heron, and herons are like the storks of Hans Andersen's fairy stories. He is a grey bird, tall and thin, with a black crest lying back from the top of his head. His legs are long, and he is fond of standing on one leg by the edge of the water, or on a stone at the end of some little promontory, tucking the other leg up in the air, and watching the water with his head on one side, ready at any moment to dive his long beak into the lake and snatch a little fish out of it. When he flies he crooks his long neck back on his shoulders and hangs his legs straight out behind, so that it is impossible not to know him when you see him.
In the little harbour, where our boat is kept, there are often so many minnows that when we look into the water it seems as if the bottom were made of moving tiny fish. People who are going to fish for perch often catch the minnows dozens at a time in nets in their boathouses, when the water is shallow, and the minnows swim up into the shadows of the boats. And there are caddises there too, if we choose the right places to look for them.
As we walk down through the fields from the farm to the boathouse, the Imp and the Elf leaping for joy in themselves, and the sunshine, and the cool wind, and the blue hills, we plan what we shall do with the day, and where we shall go, and whom of the lake people we shall try to see. And one morning or other, as we leave the farmyard, the Imp cries out, "I say, Ogre, isn't to-day the day for a picnic down the lake?" And the Elf says, "Yes. Say yes, Ogre, do," and in three minutes we are all as happy as pioneers arranging an expedition. After lunch we start, and by that time the sandwiches are cut, and the bun-loaves, and the marmalade, and the tea (hot and corked up in a bottle), and the mugs, and everything else are all packed into two baskets by the jolly old farmer's wife, and we go off together, the Imp and the Elf carrying one basket between them, while I carry the other.
We run the boat out of the boathouse, and when we have settled down, the Elf and the baskets in the stern, and the Imp lying flat on his stomach in the bows, we slip away down the lake rippling the smooth waters, and leaving long wavelets behind us that make the hills and trees dance in their reflections. We glide quietly away down the lake, looking up to the purple heather on the moors, and the dark pinewoods that run right down to the water's edge, and watching the fishermen rowing up and down trailing their lines behind them, or casting again and again over the waters of the little rocky bays that break the margin of the lake. That is one way of being interested in the water people; to want to catch them on a hook at the end of a line, but it is not our way. We think of the water folk as we think of the fairies, as of a strange small people, whom we would like to know.
We row down the lake, lazily and slowly, past rocky bays and sharp-nosed promontories, and low points pinnacled with firs. The hills change as we row. At the head of the lake they are rugged and high, with black crags on them far away, but lower down the lake they are not so rough. There are fewer rocks and more heather, and the hills are gentler and less mountainous, until at last at the foot of the lake they open into a broad flat valley, where the river runs to the sea. A little more than half way down there is an island that we can see, a green dot in the distance, from our farmhouse windows, and here we have our tea.
We run the boat carefully aground in a pebbly inlet at one end of the island. We take the baskets ashore, and camp in the shadow of a little group of pines. There is no need to tell you what a picnic tea is like. You know quite well how jolly it is, and how the bun-loaf tastes better than the finest cake, and the sandwiches disappear as if by magic, and the tea seems to have vanished almost as soon as the cork is pulled from the bottle.
As soon as tea is over we prowl over the rockinesses of the little island, and creep among the hazels and pines and tiny oaks and undergrowth. Do you know trees never look so beautiful as when you get peeps of blue water between their fluttering leaves? When we have picked our way through to the other end, we climb upon a high rock with a flat top to it, and heather growing in its crevices; and here we lie, torpid after our tea, and pretend that we are viking-folk from the north who have forced our way here by land and sea, and are looking for the first time upon a lake that no one knew before us. The Imp tells us a story of how he fought with a red-haired warrior, and how they both fell backwards into the sea, and how he killed the other man dead, and then came home to change his wet clothes, long, long ago in the white north. And the Elf, not to be beaten, has her story, too, how she rode on a dragon one night and saw the lake—this very lake—far away beneath her, like a shining shield with a blue island boss in the middle of it. And how the fiery dragon flapped down so that she could pick a scrap of heather from the island, and how here was the very heather that she picked. And then I tell them stories, too, of the old times, when the great fires were lit on the crests of the hills, as warning signals to people far away. And so the time slips away, and we suddenly find that we are ready to row on again to have just one peep at the river.
All round the low end of the lake there are tall reeds growing and bulrushes, and there is soft marshy ground that make damp islets among the reeds. As we row down we are nearly sure to see one or two big white birds with proud necks swimming slowly along the reeds. Sometimes we have seen them rise into the air with a great whirring of wings and splashing of water, and then sink again on the surface of the lake, beating up a long mane of foam as they fall. These are the swans, and on one of the islets in the reeds they have a nest; more than once, when I have been here earlier in the year, I have seen the mother swan sitting white and stately on her home, and then the little grey cygnets break out of the eggs and swim with their parents, looking so fluffy and dirty and odd that the Imp and Elf can hardly believe that some day they will turn out to be tall swans like the big white birds they love, who swim through the water like the ships of a fairy queen.
The river flows away out of the lake through a broad opening in the reeds. We row in there, and then let ourselves drift, just guiding the boat with gentle strokes of the oar, until we leave the reeds behind us, and move on the running river between green banks, thick with bush and rough with rocks. Here on the banks we sometimes see the remains of a dead fish half pulled to pieces. We know what that means, "The otter," says the Imp, and we stare about with eyes wider than before, doing our best to imagine in very stir in the bushes or under the banks that we can see his dark body, like a beaver, for he can swim in the water and dive like a fish, and run along the bank as well. But we have never seen him, though we know that he is there. And otters are growing fewer and fewer. Every year men and women with dogs come to hunt them and kill them. Some day there will be no otters left at all.
We wait in the river till the evening, and then set out to row the long way back again. As we row up the river into the lake again we can see the trout rising in big circles of ripples, and hear the peewits screaming on the marshland. It is odd how we seem to notice sounds at evening that we should not at other times. Everything seems so quiet that little noises seem to matter. When we hear the frogs croaking we do not think how loud they are, but only how silent is everything-else. It is evening now, when we row round the promontory at the low end of the lake, and already we are wondering if we shall get home before the owls begin to call. Long ago the Imp and the Elf should have been asleep in bed.
The lake is very still, and the sky is less brilliant than it was. The sun has dropped below the hills, and their outlines are clear against the rose of the sunset. The Imp and the Elf say nothing, but listen for the night noises, and watch the sky working its miracles in colour. This evening is a new dream world for them, and they are wondering whether the water people are awake or asleep. "There never is a time when everything goes to bed, is there?" says the Elf, sleepily, as we lift her out of the boat. And as the two of them go off to bed, very happy and very, very tired, we can hear the long kr-r-r-r-r-r of the nightjar in the pinewoods up the hills, and below us in the woods at the head of the lake two owls are answering each other.
It is quite a long time since the Imp and the Elf first started a guest-house for the water people. One day, when the Elf was very small, and I was showing her pictures in a book, and telling her about the sticklebacks, and the minnows, and the loaches, and the caddisworms, and all the rest of them, she sat silent for a long time, and then said suddenly, "I want to ask him," and wriggled down from my knee and went off to find the Imp. Presently they came back together. "We want to have some caddises for our own," they said, and I understood that the Elf had thought it only fair to consult the Imp before asking me about them for herself.
That very day we began to plan the guest-house. At first it was to be no more than a jam pot, with mud in the bottom of it for the caddises. Then we thought that perhaps even a caddis would like a house a little bigger than a jam pot, or even than a big marmalade jar. Even caddises crawl. The next bigger thing to one of the big marmalade jars that they have in the nursery is a basin. And basins are no use at all. They tip over if you lean on their edges to look at anything that is crawling about inside. There was nothing for it but to plan something new. And, if we were to have something made on purpose, if we were to have a really big home for caddises, there was no reason why we should not plan it bigger still and be able to keep minnows in it, or goldfish, or even a smallish eel.
So we spent a splendid afternoon planning the guest-house, and next morning walked over the fields to the village with a lot of scribblings in our hands. The scribbles were to explain what sort of a guest-house we wanted. We walked straight through the village to the glazier's shop. A glazier is a man who comes and mends windows when tennis-balls have gone through them and broken them. This glazier was very nice and kind. He let the Elf and the Imp climb up and sit on his table, while he looked over our scribbles, and then took a big sheet of paper and made a neat drawing himself. He made what he called a plan, and what he called an elevation, and then he drew a real picture of what the guest-house was to be, and put a curly fish with a winking eye swimming about in the middle. This picture he gave to the children, so that they could think about the guest-house while it was being made. He promised that we should have it in a week's time.
It was a fortnight before it came. That is the way of glaziers who are leisurely but very clever. For though the guest-house was so long in coming, it was splendid when it came. It had four sides made of glass, with wooden pillars at the corners, painted green. It was like a house whose windows had spread all over the walls. And it was so big that the Imp could easily stand in it with both feet, a good way apart, too. We filled it with water and it did not leak. There was a tube hidden in the bottom of it with a tap at the side, so that we could let the water out and put fresh water in without having to take out the fish. That was important, as we did not want to disturb our guests, and all the water-folk want their water changing from time to time.
We found a fine place for the Aquarium on one of the broad bookshelves in the study, and as soon as we had fixed it there we set about furnishing it and filling it with guests. We covered the bottom with sand, and put some big stones in it with holes in them to make hiding-places for the fish. Then we set off for the duck-pond with three jam pots and two small nets. We did not bother to play with the geese that day or even to look at the donkey. We went straight to the edge of the pond and began pulling some of the green duckweed out on the banks. We put a good deal of it into one of the pots, and then searched through a lot more, looking for those little round flat snails that I told about in the second chapter. We wanted plenty of them, because they keep the aquarium healthy, and the water sweet and fresh. As soon as we had plenty of duckweed and plenty of snails, we went on over the fields to the beck. And here we got half-a-dozen caddisworms and a water-shrimp, and some minnows. We let the shrimp go, because he does not live well except in running water. But the others we carried home with us in the jam pots, which we had to pretend into triumphal carriages. For we were bringing home our first guests.
The Imp and the Elf sat on high chairs in the study till bed-time watching the caddises crawl about on the mud, and the minnows flit in and out among the stones. And before they went to bed they said goodnight, very solemnly, to the water people. For it is always best to be polite, even if the water-people do not understand. And, as the Elf said, "Perhaps they do."
Next morning the carrier stopped on his way from the station with a big can that had come by train from London; and in the dark depths of the can we could see golden flashes. For I had written to town for half-a-dozen golden fish to come and stay with the minnows.
And after that the guest-house was always full. From time to time new guests came, and others went away, let loose again in the duck pond or the stream. Always the guests are changing. Someone sent us a little water-tortoise for a present, and we kept him with us for a little while, and then put him in the pond to see life on his own account. We have had little eels from the stream, and sticklebacks (but these are quarrelsome folk), and tadpoles, and loaches, and carp, who are like greenish goldfish, and long-bodied gudgeon, and silvery roach. Every morning, after breakfast, before setting out walking, the children come into the study and feed the guests with worms, and ants' eggs, and crumbled vermicelli.
The guest-house is like a little water world where we can see the smaller water-folk living in their own way. It is a beautiful little world, with its clear water, and green weed, with the little fishes swimming under the roots of the weeds, and darting among the crevices of the stones. And it is a little world that is not very difficult to manage. We have to be careful not to overfeed the guests, and yet we must be sure that they have enough to eat. We have to keep the water clear, changing it every other day, pouring fresh water in at the top and running out the old through the tap at the bottom. It is a little world that anyone can manage who loves the water-folk well enough to take plenty of trouble with them.
And now, do you know, we have come to the end. There is such a lot to write about the things that are jolly and wet that the Imp and the Elf say I have missed out half the things that ought to be put in, and I know that I have missed out a very great deal more than that. But if you really care for the water-folk you will find out the best of all the things that cannot be written here by going to the stream side, or the pond side, or the side of the lake and making friends with the water-people for yourself.