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Updated: May 5, 2025
A bluejay and a red-squirrel, two notorious thieves, were loudly berating each other for stealing, and at one time Rag's home bush was the centre of their fight; a yellow warbler caught a blue butterfly but six inches from his nose, and a scarlet and black ladybug, serenely waving her knobbed feelers, took a long walk up one grass-blade, down another, and across the nest and over Rag's face and yet he never moved nor even winked.
The loveliness of the early morning was indeed a pleasant sequel to the rude tempest of the preceding night. The dewdrops glistened upon grass-blade and foliage, and the bosom of the stream flashed merrily in the sunbeams. "It is," answered Beverly, "as if Nature were rejoicing that the war of the elements is over, and a peace proclaimed.
Six inches from the ground she built between them a fragile grass-blade platform. Then she started on the nest itself. Her only tools were her fore-paws, tail, and teeth. The latter she employed to soften stiff material. The weaving she did from below upwards by pure dexterity of hand and tail. For six hours she worked indefatigably, and in six hours it was finished.
Their small cylindrical cases built around themselves, composed of flags, sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and pebbles, in form and color like the wrecks which strew the bottom, now drifting along over the pebbly bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the end of some grass-blade or root.
He acted as if there were no danger, pecked at a grass-blade here and another there, and did not look about him in any direction. The boy lay stretched out full length on the goose-back, and looked up toward the blue sky. He was so accustomed to riding now, that he could both stand and lie down on the goose-back.
At least they might be gentlemen enough not to crack their jokes just now. The thought tickled him. He began to smile. Plucking a grass-blade, he smote one of his annoyers across the tail. It hopped gloriously. The boy laughed, and rose to his feet, his heart rising with him. After all he had done his best. Now he must get to Lewes and make his report. He started.
"Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed." GEN. i: 11. The two first born of our earth were the grass-blade and the herb. They preceded the brute creation and the human family the grass for the animal creation, the herb for human service. The cattle came and took possession of their inheritance, the grass-blade; man came and took possession of his inheritance, the herb.
Yet, out in it for long, the clothes become sodden, while every grass-blade and leaf can be seen to hold its burden of a glittering drop, though the earth itself remains dry and powdery and on the hard, pale roads the dust lies all day, as though the actual soil were not of the texture to respond to a mist so fine.
The magnitude of their labour could be easily inferred from the appearance of the nest: each grass-blade carried thither had been bitten into dozens of fragments, and the structure filled the entire space beyond the first of the exposed roots, though its interior, till from frequent use it changed its form, seemed hardly able to accommodate the female vole.
"You are a funny little thing!" exclaimed Martin, feeling now less like crying than laughing. The wee beetle, satisfied and refreshed, climbed up the grass-blade, and when it reached the tip lifted its dusty black wing-cases just enough to throw out a pair of fine gauzy wings that had been neatly folded up beneath them, and flew away.
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