It had been a week. It held the midsummer programme, the frog’s separate gathering, the wall photograph, and the return of normal Subcommittee business. The Sunday after it arrived on the south bank just as the correspondent had, on past experience, expected it to: at rest, in good light, with no sign at all that anything in particular was about to happen. The correspondent had risen earlier than the morning strictly asked, on the chance that a week of such weight might, in a quiet quarter of the pond, be caught in the act of declining to be a week any longer.
The older drakes were at their station at the south bank’s western end, in the arrangement that has become, as readers of the twenty-second of April will recall, their settled approach to this season’s mornings. Their talk kept to its usual volume and did not carry past their own group. The correspondent observed only this. One of the four has before been heard to open a remark with the formula “as I recall.” On Sunday he appeared to be opening a remark with that same formula again. The other three appeared to receive it in the manner of those who had recalled it themselves and now wished to know what was to be done about it.
From the west pier, in what view the south bank affords, the heron stood at the station it has occupied again since the twentieth of May. It had not moved. The dabchicks at the pier’s seaward end were in the formation now to be regarded as their formation. The fish, on such evidence as the correspondent could gather from that position, were where they have been when the heron is present, which is to say not visible. The eldest of the dabchicks was at what looked like an inspection of the family’s perimeter. She did not raise her voice.
The long-resident frog of the southern waters had returned by the third honk to his customary station at the second willow. The smaller frog of no particular acquaintance, first seen in his company on Monday last, was at a respectful distance, in a position the long-resident frog had himself held earlier in the morning. What passes between the two of them the gazette will not name, having no warrant to, and did not approach to inquire. The pondweed nearby had been arranged in a manner the frog has been known to find satisfactory.
Drake Halford came to the south bank shortly after the fourth honk, bound, the correspondent inferred, for the east shore by the longer route. He stopped a moment at the older drakes’ station, traded a remark that carried as one word the correspondent did not quite catch, and went on. His census stands, as it has since the sixteenth of last month, under review, unresolved as it has been all season. Nothing in his bearing on Sunday morning suggested he was being hurried.
By the fifth honk the pond had settled into the condition of a place that had lately produced a great deal. A programme of music beneath the Old Willow. A gathering of frogs in the southern waters. A photograph of a wall. A resumed Wednesday session. And which meant now to produce nothing further until the week required it. The light held. The water lay still. The duet that had been in question on the evening of the solstice was in question no longer. It was not being rehearsed. No one, so far as the correspondent could tell, was listening for it.
The morning held, and asked nothing of anyone, and was let alone to be the morning.