In the stories that follow I am trying to tell something about
those people.
COLD IRON
When Dan and Una had arranged to go out before breakfast, they
did not remember that it was Midsummer Morning. They only
wanted to see the otter which, old Hobden said, had been fishing
their brook for weeks; and early morning was the time to surprise
him. As they tiptoed out of the house into the wonderful stillness,
the church clock struck five. Dan took a few steps across the
dew-blobbed lawn, and looked at his black footprints.
'I think we ought to be kind to our poor boots,'he said. 'They'll
get horrid wet.'
it was their first summer in boots, and they hated them, so they
took them off, and slung them round their necks, and paddled
joyfully over the dripping turf where the shadows lay the wrong
way, like evening in the East.
The sun was well up and warm, but by the brook the last of the
night mist still fumed off the water. They picked up the chain of
otter's footprints on the mud, and followed it from the bank,
between the weeds and the drenched mowing, while the birds
shouted with surprise. Then the track left the brook and became a
smear, as though a log had been dragged along.
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