When the little drop of rain fell, he didn’t know in the least what was
going to happen. For a minute or two he felt quite frightened. Then he
suddenly found himself rolling down a hill. He had just begun to think
it great fun, when he noticed a lot of other drops beside him, all
laughing together and all rolling down the hill.
One of them came close to him and touched him, and he found himself
growing bigger. Then more and more came up, and presently he saw that he
was quite a big fellow. He felt very proud of himself. “I’m getting
bigger and bigger every minute,” he said.
Half-way down the hill he looked back, and saw himself stretched out
like a line of silver, glittering and shining between the trees and
stones and bushes.
“I’m a stream now,” he murmured proudly as he hurried over sand and
gravel and clay, “and I’m getting bigger and bigger still.”
Suddenly he found himself falling over a big black rock. Down, down he
fell, thirty feet or more. But he was so big and strong now that he
didn’t care a bit.
At the bottom of the hill there were a great many rocks and stones right
in front of him. “Get out of my way!” he roared. “I’m a river now! Get
out of my way!” And he dashed and splashed and flew right over them.
A little farther on he came to a lovely meadow, with beautiful trees
hanging down, and birds singing, and great sleepy red cattle standing
knee-deep in the long, sweet grass, and the big blue sky shimmering
overhead. It was so very, very pretty that he thought he would stay here
a while. So he twisted and wound round and round, just to get another
look at the trees, and to watch the birds flying from branch and bush.
He laughed merrily to a little boy who was standing on the bank with a
fishing-rod in his hand, and hurried on again.
As he turned a corner quickly he saw a great blue plain stretching for
miles and miles, with ships and boats and birds dotted here and there on
its broad, heaving, shining surface.
“Hello! There is the sea at last!” he cried joyfully, and rushed forward
eagerly to meet it. And as he joined the great ocean he shouted out as
if he meant that all the world should hear, “Here I am; I’m a sea now!”
(See full page illustration on page 68.)