Bracken and long grass came pouring from the top of the hill to the very bank of the stream; and the beech-trunks rose up from that soft, swirling blue-green cascade, up and up, as far as eye could see. They sprang up clear from their lovely symmetrical pattern of naked roots and climbed the air in one long pure lift and flow, or in a lightly twisting spiral. Ardently they soared, column after smooth grey-green column, lightly balancing on their roots, gathering their power, sweeping it upwards for the final high breaking of the boughs. The strong outflung whirl of the snaky boughs was lost at last in a fountain of foliage. The bright spray wove closely and shut out the sky; but the sun pierced it and lay beneath it in pools of dappled green light.
The smell of bracken was on the air, and the little Monk’s Water slipped past in front of them, brown and clear, singing over its shallows, hiding beneath its overhanging greenery.
‘This is where I once found a new kind of beetle,’ said Julian, looking round him with pleasure.
‘I shall bathe after tea,’ said Mariella. ‘Boys, we must all bathe. I rather wish I’d brought Peter now. Don’t you, Julian?’ She looked at him uncertainly.
‘Well, I told you to, didn’t I? You said he’d got to stay with his governess,’ he said, in an unkind voice.
‘Never mind, Mariella,’ said Martin quickly. ‘I think you were right not to bring him. He’d probably have found it very tiring, a long expedition like this.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, agreeing with a sort of pathetic childish complacence.
Judith remembered once again, with a pang of amazement, that Mariella was a mother.
‘What about tea?’ said Martin. ‘God, I do hope nothing’s been forgotten.’
He opened the picnic basket and searched eagerly among its contents until he found a napkinful of raw tomatoes and lettuce.