Page 181 - New Grammar with a Smile 7

The Wind in

3 the Willows

Read the passage carefully.

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little
home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs,
with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and
splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms.
Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him,
penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent
and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the
floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of
the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling
him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to
the gavelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun
and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged
again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws
and muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out
into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

‘This is fine!’ he said to himself. ‘This is better than whitewashing!’ The sunshine
struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of
the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing
almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the
delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he
reached the hedge on the further side.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled
busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building,
flowers budding, leaves thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied.
And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering ‘whitewash!’
he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these
busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting
yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along,
suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river
before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping

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