Explore "The Girl and the Beetle" by Barry Pain on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the brushwood and groups of trees that here and there broke the monotony of the flat and sandy common were the marks of autumn. The wind was soft and mild, and the leaves fell gently, and the white clouds sailed away into the distance steadily and unquestioningly. Far off the glint of sunlight fell on the narrow, sluggish river. Winds and leaves, clouds and river -- all were going home, with a calm meekness that aggravated the dying beetle. It was a good day to die on, and the beetle knew it; but yet he was dissatisfied.
Above him there hovered two unkempt birds, tormented by a sense of what in all the circumstances was the correct thing to do. Each bird had sighted the beetle, and neither would come and take it; for each thought that the other would suppose him to be greedy. Of these two birds the one was magnanimous and the other was nervous, and both were hungry.