UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
THE RIVER
It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would be always like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming—the great chestnut tree under which they played at house—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing water-rats while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot, and dropped afterwards—above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived in any other spot of the globe; and Maggie when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.
George Eliot.