



Produced by Heather Strickland & Marc D'Hooghe at
http://www.freeliterature.org





POND AND STREAM

By

ARTHUR RANSOME

Author of "The Stone Lady"

NATURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

With illustrations by Frances Craine


LONDON

ANTHONY TREHERNE & COMPANY, LTD.

12, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C.

1906



FOR MOLLY



CONTENTS.

   I. About the Book
   II. The Duck Pond
   III, Stream and Ditch
   IV. Lake and River
   V. Our Own Aquarium



[Illustration]




I

ABOUT THE BOOK


This is a book about the things that are jolly and wet: streams,
and ponds, and ditches, and all the things that swim and wriggle
in them. I wonder if you like them as much as they are liked by
the Imp and the Elf? You know all about the Imp and the Elf, do
you not? Those two small jolly children, who live in a little
grey house in a green garden, and know the country and all the
things in it, almost as well as they know each other? The Imp and
the Elf love everything that is wet. They paddle in the streams,
and build dams, and make waterfalls, and harbours, and sail
boats, and do all the other things that every sensible person
wants to do. And they love all the fishy people who live in the
water, and the beasts that crawl in the mud, and the birds that
hop from stone to stone in the stream.

At home they keep a big glass tank on one of the bookcases in the
study. And that is the aquarium. It is a kind of indoor watery
home for the people whom they meet when they mess about in the
duck-pond, or the becks that trickle down the valley. You know
what a beck is? The Imp and the Elf are north country children,
and they would not understand you if you called the beck a
stream.

I will tell you about some of the guests who come to stay with
us, and live in the watery tank. But they must be talked about at
the end of the book. For just now I want to tell you about the
ponds and streams from which they come, and the things that have
happened to us there, and all the other things that you will want
to know, and the things the Imp and the Elf, who are sitting side
by side in my big chair, say must be told to you.




II

THE DUCK POND


The Duck Pond is far away at the other side of the village. We
walk a mile down over the fields, till we come to the village,
and then we go through a little cluster of grey houses, past the
tavern with the the picture of the prancing Blue Unicorn hanging
out over the door, past the little grey church with the red tiled
roof, past the farmyard by the smith's, where there is always a
large sized piebald pig grunting in the yard, and out again into
the fields. And then, on the left hand side of the road, we come
to three stacks, a horse trough, and a piece of commonland.

The common is rough and untidy, with clumps of gorse and thistles
and nettles. There is usually a spotty pony chewing the grass,
and a goat with naughty looking horns and a grey beard. A tiny
donkey with an enormous voice is tethered to a stake in the
ground. There is a crowd of geese, who throw out their long necks
in vicious curves, and hiss at strangers and sometimes frighten
them. They do not hiss at us. Perhaps they know that we would not
be very frightened if they did. The Elf likes this last part of
the walk, because she loves to imagine she is a goosegirl in a
fairy tale, who drives geese, until she meets a noble Prince, who
finds out that really she is a Princess all the time. Some days
the Imp is quite ready to pretend to be the Prince, and act the
whole story. But other days he is in a precious hurry to get to
the pond, and the poor Elf has to be a goosegirl without a
Prince, and that is a poor business. She soon tires of it, and
runs after us across the common.

Long before we reach the pond, we hear the quaack, quaack of the
ducks, and see them waddling along with their bodies very near
the ground by the muddy edges of the water, flopping hurriedly
first on one leg and then on the other. When we get near them we
can see that as they lift their feet they turn their toes in in a
manner that shows they have not been at all properly brought up.
But then