“Ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. Think of all the beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. There are five varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard—and all these delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this excessive rush of the water.”
“Umph!” growled the Millstones. “What with your religious scruples and your taste for botany we’d hardly know you for the Wheel that put the carter’s son under last autumn. You never worried about him!”
“He ought to have known better.”
“So ought your jewels of nature. Tell ’em to grow where it’s safe.”
“How a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!” said the Cat to the Rat.
“They were such beautiful little plants too,” said the Rat tenderly. “Maiden’s-tongue and hart’s-hair fern trellising all over the wall just as they do on the sides of churches in the Downs. Think what a joy the sight of them must be to our sturdy peasants pulling hay!”
“Golly!” said the Millstones. “There’s nothing like coming to the heart of things for information”; and they returned to the song that all English water-mills have sung from time beyond telling:
There was a jovial miller once
Lived on the River Dee,
And this the burden of his song
For ever used to be.
Then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note:
I care for nobody—no not I,
And nobody cares for me.