THE JOURNEY FROM THE CLOUDS TO THE SEA
When the little drop of rain fell, he didn’t know in the least what was going to happen. For a minute or two he felt quite frightened. Then he suddenly found himself rolling down a hill. He had just begun to think it great fun, when he noticed a lot of other drops beside him, all laughing together and all rolling down the hill.
One of them came close to him and touched him, and he found himself growing bigger. Then more and more came up, and presently he saw that he was quite a big fellow. He felt very proud of himself. “I’m getting bigger and bigger every minute,” he said.
Half-way down the hill he looked back, and saw himself stretched out like a line of silver, glittering and shining between the trees and stones and bushes.
“I’m a stream now,” he murmured proudly as he hurried over sand and gravel and clay, “and I’m getting bigger and bigger still.”
Suddenly he found himself falling over a big black rock. Down, down he fell, thirty feet or more. But he was so big and strong now that he didn’t care a bit.
At the bottom of the hill there were a great many rocks and stones right in front of him. “Get out of my way!” he roared. “I’m a river now! Get out of my way!” And he dashed and splashed and flew right over them.
A little farther on he came to a lovely meadow, with beautiful trees hanging down, and birds singing, and great sleepy red cattle standing knee-deep in the long, sweet grass, and the big blue sky shimmering overhead. It was so very, very pretty that he thought he would stay here a while. So he twisted and wound round and round, just to get another look at the trees, and to watch the birds flying from branch and bush.
He laughed merrily to a little boy who was standing on the bank with a fishing-rod in his hand, and hurried on again.
As he turned a corner quickly he saw a great blue plain stretching for miles and miles, with ships and boats and birds dotted here and there on its broad, heaving, shining surface.