For the sweetest craft that slips her moorings in the Round Pond is what is called a stick-boat , because she is rather like a stick until she is in the water and you are holding the string . Then as you walk round , pulling her , you see little men running about her deck , and sails rise magically and catch the breeze , and you put in on dirty nights at snug harbours which are unknown to the lordly yachts . Night passes in a twink , and again your rakish craft noses for the wind , whales spout , you glide over buried cities , and have brushes with pirates , and cast anchor on coral isles . You are a solitary boy while all this is taking place , for two boys together can not adventure far upon the Round Pond , and though you may talk to yourself throughout the voyage , giving orders and executing them with despatch , you know not , when it is time to go home , where you have been or what swelled your sails ; your treasure-trove is all locked away in your hold , so to speak , which will be opened , perhaps , by another little boy many years afterwards . But those yachts have nothing in their hold . Does any one return to this haunt of his youth because of the yachts that used to sail it ? Oh no . It is the stick-boat that is freighted with memories . The yachts are toys , their owner a fresh-water mariner ; they can cross and recross a pond only while the stick-boat goes to sea . You yachtsmen with your wands , who think we are all there to gaze on you , your ships are only accidents of this place , and were they all to be boarded and sunk by the ducks , the real business of the Round Pond would be carried on as usual . -LSB- Illustration : The island on which all the birds are born that become baby boys and girls -LRB- missing from book -RRB- -RSB- Paths from everywhere crowd like children to the pond . Some of them are ordinary paths , which have a rail on each side , and are made by men with their coats off , but others are vagrants , wide at one spot , and at another so narrow that you can stand astride them . They are called Paths that have Made Themselves , and David did wish he could see them doing it . But , like all the most wonderful things that happen in the Gardens , it is done , we concluded , at night after the gates are closed . We have also decided that the paths make themselves because it is their only chance of getting to the Round Pond . One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep get their hair cut . When David shed his curls at the hairdresser 's , I am told , he said good-bye to them without a tremor , though his mother has never been quite the same bright creature since ; so he despises the sheep as they run from their shearer , and calls out tauntingly , ` Cowardly , cowardly custard ! ' But when the man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist at him for using such big scissors . Another startling moment is when the man turns back the grimy wool from the sheep 's shoulders and they look suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre . The sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin , and as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once , quite anxiously , as if they feared that they would never be worth eating .
XXXXX wonders whether they know each other , now that they are so different , and if it makes them fight with the wrong ones .
David Gardens Night Pond accidents harbours nights shearer treasure-trove twink