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.
[V]
OUR OWN AQUARIUM
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.