So things went on
almost till New Year's Eve. The flats of the Upper Thames, where the
floods get out up the ditches and tributaries, and the wild duck gather on
the shallow "splashes" and are stalked with the stalking-horse as of old,
were as dry as Richmond Park, and sounded hollow to the foot, instead of
wheezing like a sponge. The herons could not find a meal on a hundred
acres of meadow, which even a frog found too dry for him, and the little
brooks and land-springs which came down through them to the big river were
as low as in June, as clear as a Hampshire chalk stream, and as full of
the submerged life of plants. Instead of dying with the dying year at the
inrush of cold water brought by autumn rains, all the cresses, and
tresses, and stars, and tangles, and laced sprays of the miniature growth
of the springs and running brooks were as bright as malachite, though
embedded in a double line of dead white shivering sedge. And thus the
shortest day went by, and still the fields lay dry, and the river shrank,
and the fish were off the feed; and though murky vapours hung over the
river and the flats and shut out the sun, the long-expected rains fell not
until the last week's end of the year.
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