It is pretty to
watch the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat among the oaks in
their fresh green foliage, full of fun as a bright child,
eating his apple like a child, only it is an oak-apple,
shining white or white and rosy-red, in his little paws; but
you have seen it so many times--come away:
It was not this voice alone which made me forsake the green
oaks of Silchester and Pamber Forest, to ramble for a season
hither and thither in Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset; there
was something for me to do in those places, but the call
made me glad to go. And long weeks--months--went by in my
wanderings, mostly in open downland country, too often under
gloomy skies, chilled by cold winds and wetted by cold rains.
Then, having accomplished my purpose and discovered
incidentally that the call had mocked me again, as on so many
previous occasions, I returned once more to the old familiar
green place.
Crossing the common, I found that where it had been dry in
spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that
the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old
spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the
end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old
hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was
blue, and the flying clouds were of a dazzling whiteness.
Shivering, I remembered the south wall, and went there, since
to escape from the wind and bask like some half-frozen serpent
or lizard in the heat was the highest good one could look for
in such weather.
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