moving. A mole! It emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
“It seems to see with the end of its nose,” said Connie.
“Better than with its eyes!” he said. “Will you drink?”
“Will you?”
She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little herself.
“So icy!” she said gasping.
“Good, isn’t it! Did you wish?”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I wished. But I won’t tell.”
She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the blue.
“Clouds!” she said.
“White lambs only,” he replied.
A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out onto the soft yellow earth.
“Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him,” said Clifford.
“Look! he’s like a parson in a pulpit,” said she.
She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.