More than any of the rest of the
gardens in the village, that of The Ruins suffered from such weather;
for not only was there a deep gravel-bed under its mould, but a good
part of its produce grew on the mounds, which were mostly heaps of
stones, and neither gravel nor stones could retain much moisture. Willie
watered it a good deal out of the Prior's Well; but it was hard work,
and did not seem to be of much use.
One evening, when he had set the little brook free to run through the
garden, and the sun was setting huge and red, with the promise of
another glowing day to-morrow, and the air was stifling, and not a
breath of wind stirring, so that the flowers hung their heads oppressed,
and the leaves and little buttons of fruit on the trees looked ready to
shrivel up and drop from the boughs, the thought came to him whether he
could not turn the brook into a little Nile, causing it to overflow its
banks and enrich the garden. He could not, of course, bring it about in
the same way; for the Nile overflows from the quantities of rain up in
the far-off mountains, making huge torrents rush into it faster than its
channel, through a slow, level country, can carry the water away, so
that there is nothing for it but overflow.
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