The east bank on the morning of the second was thinner of attendance and dearer of crust than an ordinary summer would call customary. None of which surprised a reader of Saturday’s editorial. I walked the bank from the south at first honk, on the understanding that Lammas gives the feeding point a particular character once a year, and found that this year’s particular character was an economy in mild correction of itself.
The queue stood at no more than seven parties at any point in the first quarter-hour. Last Sunday, on the same ground, by the same count, it had stood at eleven. The rate ran between eleven and twelve crusts to the hour, which is the figure Saturday’s editorial called “considered,” and which Sunday morning was, in the unhurried way of a Sunday morning, considering. A pair of mallards in the third position seemed to be making their peace with the figure rather than disputing it. I let them.
The Travelling Drake, back in good time for the observance, was at the eastern margin, at a distance I judged respectful. He was not in the queue. He gave no sign of meaning to enter it. He was, in the steady fashion that is his, watching it. Whether he watched as a matter on which he has held a position since the spring, or whether he watched with the quiet satisfaction of a bird whose paper has finally taken its stand, I could not tell, and did not feel free to decide. He spoke to no one. No one approached him.
The long-resident frog, by contrast, did something worth the column. He was at the east shore, briefly, some way south of the feeding point. Then at the channel’s edge. Then, for the shortest interval, on the far side of the channel itself, which is a distance the frog does not, by our records, customarily cross. He did not present at the feeding point. He came back the way he had gone inside what I timed at a quarter-hour. The frog presently resident in the southern waters was nowhere in evidence. The errand, whatever it was, appears to have been the long-resident frog’s alone.
The dabchicks across the water held their accustomed formation. The eldest of the dabchicks kept the seaward end. No statement issued, and on a Lammas Sunday none would have. The heron stood at its accustomed station and did not move while I watched. The fish, I record for the avoidance of doubt, were not visible.
Among the older drakes, arranged along the south bank’s western end in the customary configuration, the little of the conversation that carried held the word “Lammas” once and the word “well” four times. They did not appear to be assigning the morning a character. They appeared to be letting it find one of its own.
A note, for any reader who wondered whether Saturday’s editorial gave the matter the firmness the spring’s correspondent had pressed for. It has been addressed in such firmness as the season permits. The index is not, this morning, twelve. By tomorrow it may be eleven and a half. The frog has been across the channel. The Travelling Drake remains. The pond, on the first Sunday of August, conducts the business of the day at the pace the business of the day prefers.