hey had lifted the frame and propped it
up with wedges.

The gooseberries were no bigger than beads, but he tasted two, and then
a thrush began to sing on an ash-tree in the hedge of the meadow.
"Bevis! Bevis!" said the thrush, and he turned round to listen: "My
dearest Bevis, have you forgotten the meadow, and the buttercups, and
the sorrel? You know the sorrel, don't you, that tastes so pleasant if
you nibble the leaf? And I have a nest in the bushes, not very far up
the hedge, and you may take just one egg; there are only two yet. But
don't tell any more boys about it, or we shall not have one left. That
is a very sweet garden, but it is very small. I like all these fields to
fly about in, and the swallows fly ever so much farther than I can; so
far away and so high, that I cannot tell you how they find their way
home to the chimney. But they will tell you, if you ask them.
Good-morning! I am going over the brook."

Bevis went to the iron railings and got up two bars, and looked over;
but he could not yet make up his mind, so he went inside the
summer-house, which had one small round window. All the lower part of
the blue walls was scribbled and marked with pencil, where he had
written and drawn, and put down his ideas and notes. The lines were
somewhat intermingled, and crossed each other, and some stretched out
long distances, and came back in sharp angles. But Bevis knew very well
what he meant when he wrote it all. Taking a stump of cedar pencil from
his pocket, one end of it much gnawn, he added a few scrawls to the
inscriptions, and then stood on the seat to look out of the round
window, which was darkened by an old cobweb.

Once upon a time there was a very cunning spider--a very cunning spider
indeed. The old toad by the rhubarb told Bevis there had not been such a
cunning spider for many summers; he knew almost as much about flies as
the old toad, and caught such a great number, that the toad began to
think there would be none left for him. Now the toad was extremely fond
of flies, and he watched the spider with envy, and grew more angry about
it every day.

As he sat blinking and winking by the rhubarb in his house all day long,
the toad never left off thinking, thinking, thinking about the spider.
And as he kept thinking, thinking, thinking, so he told Bevis, he
recollected that he knew a great deal about a good many other things
besides flies. So one day, after several weeks of thinking, he crawled
o