It took but little to amuse, sometimes, for on one of the beautiful
summer days at nooning time, a group of men were resting in the shade
of the arbor that was on an island artificially made in the brook below
the terraces in front of the Hive, breathing the pure, balmy air of
outdoors instead of the indoor air of the workshop, reclining on the
thick greensward, when some two or three essayed the not very difficult
feat of jumping the merrily running brook, from embankment to
embankment, and dared Tirrell, one of the number, to follow. He was the
oldest and a little less supple than the others; and in trying the jump
deliberately landed about three inches short of the opposite bank, knee
deep in the water. It was, as the young people say, "too funny for
anything," but equally funny to the lookers-on to see the amused
Chiswell, one of his mates, roll over and over on the greensward in
repeated convulsions of side-splitting laughter, whilst the others,
standing up, had hard work to keep their perpendicular and writhed in
awful shapes as they joined in chorus with him, as Tirrell was slowly
wading out of the water up the embankment.