So long dead were the old
pond-makers that great trees grew now upon the causeways, and vast
jungles of rush and water grasses choked the trickling overflows from
one pond to the other. Once, it was said, when the earth of those parts
had been rich in iron, these ponds had driven great hammers,--but long
before the memory of the oldest cottager they had rested from their
labours, and lived only the life of beauty and silence. Where iron had
once been was now the wild rose, and the grim wounds of the earth had
been healed by the kisses of five hundred springs.
About these ponds stole many a secret path, veined with clumsy roots,
shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing
sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies
floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens,
and sometimes a bird broke the silence with a frightened cry.
It was here that Beatrice and Wonder would often take their morning
walk,--Wonder, though but a little girl of four, having grown more and
more of a companion to her mother, since Antony's love for Silencieux.
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