“Look at this.” Walter nosed a piece of bark toward the bank. The pool’s surface was littered with chips of wood and bark. “This elegant sliver of bark is a boat.” He gentled it around and around, then out the channel that led to the brook, where the current took it. “And there she goes! Away down our own bucolic stream—but soon to be joined, after travels through numerous little towns, to the ever-flowing, majestic Connecticut River—and then—O grandeur!—with a whoosh and a rush and sploosh, the glory of Long Island Sound! Just think of it, Cricket! The poetry of it—the beauty! It makes the heart swell.”
“It makes the head ache, the way you describe it,” said Chester.
But Walter, whose mind was flying high, would not be stopped. “And along with toy boats when the fit is upon us, we make—we make”—he glanced around, discovered a chunk of floating wood, which didn’t look all that big to Chester, and slithered up on top of it—“we make boat boats!” And promptly capsized, which wasn’t a serious accident, for a water snake.
“Very impressive,” said Chester, when Walter came up, spluttering joyfully.
“Just watch! Just watch!” The snake tried again, and this time he managed to stay afloat. By using the end of his tail like an oar, he even was able to paddle himself in leisurely circles around the pool. “Just look! Am I grace? I am athletic grace! I am poetry in motion!”
“You’re crazy,” said Simon.
“Now you, Crunchy Cricket!” Walter beached his homemade canoe below Chester. “Jump on!”
“Oh, Walt,” Chester groaned. “I don’t feel like a boat ride.”
“See these fangs?” The water snake reared up, made his head level with Chester, and showed the cricket two really astonishing, long, curved teeth.
“Very scary,” said Chester.
“You hop on my pleasure craft before I sink ’em into you!”
“Oh, all right.” Chester did as he was told. And found that the boat was much more suitable for a cricket than for an overactive water snake. “You wouldn’t really bite me, Walter, would you?”
“No, never. Never!” Walt shook his head. “But I have to pull rank sometimes to remind myself that I’m terrifying. At least that’s what some dopey humans think. There”—he sank to his nose and rocked Chester gently on the rhythmical billows that flowed back and forth across Simon’s Pool—“isn’t that comfy, now?”
Chester stretched himself out. In fact, it felt so delectable, he stretched each leg out separately. “Quite nice,” he admitted. “Delightful, I must say. Very restful.”
“You look as if you need a rest.” Walt peered at Chester, examining him—very doctorish. His beady eyes, if only they behaved themselves, were highly scientific.
“I didn’t sleep a wink,” yawned Chester.
“More birds?”
“No birds.”
“Then elephants? Zebras? Kangaroos?” Walter searched for unusual animals, and found the strangest ones of all. “Chipmunks, perhaps?”
“I didn’t dare fall asleep,” confessed Chester. “Emmy and Hen said I snored.”
“Poor cricket!” Walter exclaimed. He found a position that suited him and just settled back to relax. Walter could do that with water—just turn it into furniture that fitted him any way he wished. “Let’s hear it all. Just start from Stump One.”
“Stump One is squashed,” said Chester. “I’ll start from when we left yesterday. Well—” The deep breath he drew now—the breath to tell all—was a little bit sadder than the one he had drawn just the day before. “We scurried on home, with the two of them urging me please to keep up—it was going to rain. So then we got there. And oh, Walter—oh, Simon—you just ought to see their lawn!”
“But what about Uncle?” Simon asked.
“Oh, Uncle—I forgot,” said the cricket. “He’s a grand old rosebush—he really is. Very casual, very easygoing. Just lets himself climb and spread as he wants, every which way. Very informal he is. And believe you me!—Uncle Rosebush is absolutely the last informal soul that I saw yesterday! ’Cause behind good old Uncle—”
“I see it coming!” caroled Walter. “Behind good old Uncle, the chip and the munk have their lawn.”
“Do they ever!” said Chester. “And are they ever proud of it! I have to admit, though, it’s beautiful—that is, if you like grass so well tended it has to be treated like fragile green glass. You know that golf course, Walter? South of the Meadow?”
“I know it,” said Walter. “But I don’t golf much. Play a lot of tennis, but—”
“Anyway—the chipmunks’ lawn would make the neatest green on that golf course look like a patch of untended prairie. They bite it once a week.”
“The chipmunks bite their lawn?” This bit of information astonished even Walt Water Snake. He keeled over backwards and disappeared. And stayed under for quite a long time.
“Walter?” Chester tapped the water. “Walt Water Snake?”
“You called?” The snake popped up again and rested his head on the chunk of wood—now Chester’s boat—where the cricket was floating. “Do you mean to tell me, Cracklin’ Cricket, that Emmy and Hen chew on their lawn?”
“It’s the only way they can keep it trimmed just so. And ‘just so,’ they told me, is how they like it. Not too long, not too short—”
—“just so.” Walter saw it all. “Oh boy! oh boy! Oh me! oh my!”
“I was invited to join them next Thursday, biting the lawn. That’s when they do it: every Thursday at ten o’clock. The weather permitting, I suppose.”
“The sweetness of it! The tenderness!” Walter saw even more. “Just think—like two little brown sheepies, munching away. Next Christmas, somebody should give them a doll’s-house lawnmower.”
“I wanted to see this fabulous turf up close,” said Chester, “but as I was bending down, they both squeaked at me, ‘Please don’t—’ ‘—step on the grass!’ And honestly, Walter, my feet aren’t really all that big. I wouldn’t have left a dent in their lawn. But to hear the way they were hollering, anybody’d suspect that I was a June bug wearing wooden shoes. I hopped quick back on the path, I can tell you.”
“They have a path?” Walter asked.
“A beautiful path! Made out of twenty-six perfect white stones, curving up to their front door. I know there are twenty-six, too, because they told me so—twice. It took them six months to find just the right stones, in the brook. They have to match exactly, you see.
“Imagine! Twenty-six perfect white stones,” echoed Walter. “It sounds just like a fairy tale! I’m surprised they didn’t use bread crumbs.”
“The birds would have eaten the bread crumbs,” said Chester. “And besides”—he cleared his throat—“you can’t polish bread crumbs.”
“They don’t!” Walter exclaimed.
“Every Wednesday. Weather permitting. At three in the afternoon. They said so. With nice dry little ferns that they save especially for polishing.”
“Could you get me an invitation?”
“To polish the path? You want one—?”
“Har har.” Walt rocked Chester’s boat so vigorously that the cricket almost fell off.
“Oh, Walter—you get me so mad sometimes,” said Chester—and almost meant it, too—as he tried to keep from falling in.
Like many snakes, Walter Water Snake could do with his wiggling what most animals—and a few human beings, the gifted ones—can do with their hands: he could express the most subtle and wide-ranging emotions. The hypnotic swaying, just now, of his whole upper half above the water suggested admiration and awe—and perhaps a little twitch of doubt. “If the yard and the path were so perfect”—he sighed and looked toward heaven—“the mind boggles to think what the house must be like!”
“It’s beautiful!”
Walter loomed over Chester eagerly. “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”
“Everything”—the cricket paused—“is in place.”
The looming became more impatient. “Well? Well?”
“Well, that’s it. Everything is just so. I felt—that is, even before they told me not to—that I really shouldn’t touch anything.”
“They told you to keep your feet off their house?”
“Not in so many words,” Chester tried to explain. “But I guess I’m just a touchy person. You know, Walter, these front feet of mine”—he wiggled two feet to demonstrate—“they’re almost as agile as hands. And I do like to handle things, too.”
“I don’t have hands or feet!” said Walter. “And I get by.”
“Well, of course,” agreed Chester. “But if you do have a hand or a foot—”
“—or a fang—”
“—or a fang—you might as well use it, is my philosophy. Well, not the fang, exactly.”
“On special occasions, I use my fangs!” boasted Walter. “Like building boats.” He winked at Simon. (Or would have, if he’d had an eyelid.)
“Anyway, I like to touch things!” Chester said. “I like to pick things up and hold them close and look at them. You get the feel of the world that way. But when I picked up the rose blossom—”
“What blossom?”
“It’s one of Uncle’s most beautiful blossoms. They saved it from last spring. In the middle of the living room—they call it the living room, although Henry sleeps there, the room just inside the door—in there they’ve got this big table. It’s made of a section of branch, gnawed smooth on each side. And, Walter, I mean smooth! What those chipmunks can do with their teeth is amazing.”
“Little dental homemakers, they are,” Walt observed.
“Yes, and right smack in the center—the centerpiece—of this very carefully gnawed maple table is Uncle’s loveliest, biggest blossom. In a tasteful arrangement of four green leaves.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Walter. “I’m going to faint!” And he fainted. At least he collapsed beneath the surface. And blew a few bubbles. And reappeared. “They’re into flowers. I knew it!”
“They certainly are!” Chester Cricket went on. “Their two rooms are simply papered with petals! There’s some of Uncle’s best petals, of course, but there’s also purple ones, from irises, and yellow daisy and crocus petals. The red ones from Uncle are the best, but they’ve got dried petals tacked up on their walls from every single kind of flower that grows in this whole Meadow! They start collecting and drying in March—they told me so.”
Simon Turtle sighed and shook his head—at the wonder and the diligence of little animals. He’d been listening silently all this while. “But how do they tack them up?”
“With Uncle’s thorns. But they never pick one—they swore to that. He just seems to know. Whenever they need a thorn or two, to pin up a new petal, they find some out on the lawn in the morning. He’s wonderful! He gives them whole blossoms, he gives them petals, he gives them leaves—and then thorns to hold it all together. I think he must love them an awful lot. Of course, being a plant, he never says much.”
“Itsy-bitsy chipsy munks! I love them, too,” said Walter. “More. More! Tell us more—of the tasteful decor that the chipmunks adore! How’s the ceiling? The floor? Are there knickknacks galore? Wow! Sssst! I really feel great today!” Walt felt so great that he streaked up out of the water, turned a somersault in the air, and—straight as an arrow—plunged back in. He came up where Chester hadn’t expected, behind the boat. “Some dive, huh? I’ll show you a triple next time. But what else about Emmy and Hen—what else?”
“They have a fireplace—”
“That’s good to hear! A fireplace is cozy at least.”
“It’s never lit.”
“Oh, gosh!” Walter Water Snake sank down in despair. “An unlit hearth. That’s sad, sad, sad!”
“They say it would smoke up the flowers, and maybe leave soot on the stones. They live in this old stone wall, you know, and on the inside those stones are clean!”
“I’ll bet.”
“But the fireplace is very pretty. There’s little dry branches crisscrossed in it, and crumpled dry leaves underneath, with a fan of ferns in the back. All it needs is a match.”
“I’m going to slither over there—”
“Oh no, you’re not!” said Simon Turtle.
“I’ll swipe a lighted cigarette—from a picnicker, whom I’ll terrify first, of course—”
“You’ll stay right in that pool where you belong. You’d scare the poor dears to death. So you didn’t feel too much at home there, Chester?”
“I didn’t dare to turn around! For fear of knocking down pussy willows. Whenever there’s room between the blossoms, there are pussy-willow wands. I sat in a corner for an hour or so, and then it began to rain.”
“Don’t tell me their house leaks.”
“Gracious no! The rain wouldn’t dare leak on Emmy and Hen. But I like these sudden summer showers. It always feels as if someone decided to take a bath—all at once. I like to go for a hop in the rain. Especially toward the end of one, when the sun comes out and everything begins to glisten. I love to jump in the sparkle of things. And yesterday we had a rainbow. Only a short one, but long enough to make my wish.”
“I thought everybody packed his bags and went off to look for the pot of gold,” said Simon Turtle.
“Oh, I don’t believe that. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But I do believe you can wish on one.”
“I’ll bet I know what your wish was, Chancy Chester!”
“Don’t tell if you do!” the cricket warned. “It won’t work if you say it. So, anyway, I had my hop and came back to Littleville.”
“Is that what they call it?” There seemed to be nothing of Walter underwater; the whole of him was stretched up in the air.
“No, I do,” said Chester. “But don’t you dare tell them! I wouldn’t hurt their furry feelings for the tastiest leaves in Connecticut. They were always extremely polite and nice. Even when insisting I wipe my feet.”
“Let me guess,” said Walter. “You came back from your walk in the rain—”
“—and my feet were dirty. Right. That is, there were two or three specks of mud, which I barely could see—on two or three feet—but Emily could. Oh, could she ever! As soon as I hopped in the door—”
“With a cheery ‘Hi, Itsy! Hi, Bitsy!’ no doubt.”
“I didn’t say that!” declared Chester. “I didn’t have time to say a word before Emily started to wring her hands. She’s very good at that, Emily is. Henry prefers to shake his head and say ‘Tsk! tsk!’ Well, one said, ‘Oh dear, you’ve tracked—’ and the other one finished it ‘—in dirt!’”
“O horror! O terror! O vilest of crimes!”
“Oh, Walt, keep quiet!” Chester Cricket exploded. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“I do,” said Walter gravely. “I’m deeply moved. And I bow most low in apology.” He bowed most low—so low, indeed, that he disappeared from sight. For a while. “Okay, I’m back. So then what happened?” He rested his chin on the bow of the boat.
“I was informed, very courteously, that there was a mat outside. Not outside the door, mind you. Oh no! It was just before you reached the lawn. They like for people to wipe their feet before they step on the polished stone path.”
“Ohhhh—” Walter began.
“Are you going to sing something?”
“Maybe later. If the spirit moves.” The water snake coyly twitched his tail, sucked on a fang, and winked at Chester. “Please go on.”
“I cleaned my feet on the mat they’d made—knotted out of dry fern, and very nice—and scraped off the mud on a root of Uncle’s that stuck above ground. Which I’m sure he didn’t mind me doing. As a matter of fact, from the rustling going on all around, my guess is he found me hilarious. I didn’t, though. I found me absurd! Standing there and balancing as I tried to wipe off all my feet on a fern!”
“I don’t find you absurd.” As quick as a flash—but not to bite—Walter struck and gave Chester a peck of a kiss on the head. “I find you delightful.
Pray continue.”
“Dinner time, it was by then. We washed our paws—that is, they did. I washed my two front feet again—in the chipmunk’s thimble. And don’t look at me with your snake eyes, Walter! They do have a thimble, which they keep all polished up with ferns. You know that old lady—the one who always wears the red shawl, on the hottest days, too; she comes once a week, and sits on a bench in Pasture Land, and sews all afternoon—you know her? Well, last July she lost a thimble, and she’s never going to find it again—”
“—because Emry and Henly now have a silver cistern in their house!”
“Exactly! Which they fill with fresh water whenever it rains.”
“I see it! Oh, I do see it!” said Walter. His gaze was at something awesome. “The beauty of littleness! Little chipmunks! Little thimbles! Little wishes! And real big happiness! Oh, I love it! More! More!”
“We washed. And then wiped our paws, feet, whatever, on clean fern towels they have stacked by the thimble-cistern-sink.”
“Fern towels, fern towels.” Walter seemed dazed by the thought. “I never knew fern was so useful.”
“That isn’t all. We sat at the table and ate off doilies made—”
“—of fern!”
“—and wiped our mouths with napkins—”
“—of fern! Hallelujah! And hooray for fern! That’s what we’ll call the chips’ hideaway—Fern Lawn! How’s that?”
“Terrific, Walter!” Chester almost forgot how tired he was in the rush of Walter’s enthusiasm. “They may not be so mad at me for sneaking out this morning when they find we’ve invented a name for their place.”
“You snuck out?”
“Yes, while they were still asleep. Of course, I—who was so dead-tired my antennae were dragging, after my night in the willow tree—I didn’t sleep at all.”
“Why not?” Walter wondered. “There were no fern mattresses? No fern blankets? Fern pillows? Green little fern dreams to dance in your head?”
“I snore!” declared Chester.
“A cricket snores?” Walter looked at Simon. “It must sound like a fluttering leaf in the breeze.”
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