Footpaths cross the meadows, and where they come to the brook, bridges have been made by simply laying a huge flat slate stone from bank to bank across the water. One of our favourite ways of picnicking is to take our basket of food across the meadows and camp in the long grass close by one of these bridges. For then we get the best of everything. The best of the meadow things, purple orchids, and kingcups, like enormous buttercups twice gilded, and the delicate butterfly orchids, who are rare indeed, with their pale green spikes, with the white flowers tinted with green, fluttering round them. There is plenty of the little blue forget-me-not growing in clumps close to the water, and ragged robin, with his touzled pink petals close under the meadow hedge. And, best of all, perhaps we see a blue flash, and then another blue flash, and then another, and we know that there is a dragon fly shooting about over the water, and among the water plants, like a small azure comet. Sometimes, when he hovers over a flower, we can see him, but we can never see his wings. They move too fast. And when he is flying about, we can see nothing but the blue glittering flash that shows that he is there. [Illustration] The best of the water things, too, we get. For lying on the banks of the stream, even while we are eating our sandwiches, we can see the caddises in the muddy shallows, and sometimes a water shrimp, and often a shoal of minnows. And, when the stream is low, the Imp can crawl along, from one side of the bridge to the other, under the big slate, putting his feet and hands on the stones left dry by the water. And that is fun indeed. The Elf and I lie flat on our fronts on the stone bridge, and hang our heads over the edge, and look backwards up the tunnel. And we see the Imp start in at the other end, and come crawling under like a rat in a wet hole. We see his hands and feet clawing about for stones to rest on, and the Elf shouts to him, "There is a stone there--no, there--there, stupid!" and sometimes he finds the stone, and sometimes he does not. We hear him grunt with hotness and excitement. And usually we hear him splash, as one leg or the other slips from its resting-place into the water. And then out he comes, mightily panting, at our end of the bridge. Somehow, with a great pull, he tumbles round on to the bank. And then, because one foot is wet he must take his shoe and stocking off. And if one shoe, why not the other? And if the Imp is allowed to take his shoes and stockings off, why not the Elf? And so, in about three minutes, there are two pairs of stockings and two pair of shoes neatly laid out on the bank, and two small people paddling in the stream, playing for a little, just for the joy of feeling the water stream past their ankles, and then searching about and looking for the little folk of the stream and talking about them, and asking all sorts of questions.