"I say ye do," said Mowgli, shooting out his forefinger angrily.
"Ye DO run away, and I, who am the Master of the Jungle, must
needs walk alone. How was it last season, when I would gather
sugar-cane from the fields of a Man-Pack? I sent a runner--I
sent thee!--to Hathi, bidding him to come upon such a night and
pluck the sweet grass for me with his trunk."

"He came only two nights later," said Bagheera, cowering a
little; "and of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he
gathered more than any Man-cub could eat in all the nights of
the Rains. That was no fault of mine."

"He did not come upon the night when I sent him the word.
No, he was trumpeting and running and roaring through the
valleys in the moonlight. His trail was like the trail of
three elephants, for he would not hide among the trees.
He danced in the moonlight before the houses of the Man-Pack.
I saw him, and yet he would not come to me; and _I_ am the
Master of the Jungle!"

"It was the Time of New Talk," said the panther, always very
humble. "Perhaps, Little Brother, thou didst not that time call
him by a Master-word? Listen to Ferao, and be glad!"

Mowgli's bad temper seemed to have boiled itself away. He lay
back with his head on his arms, his eyes shut. "I do not know--
nor do I care," he said sleepily. "Let us sleep, Bagheera.
My stomach is heavy in me. Make me a rest for my head."

The panther lay down again with a sigh, because he could hear
Ferao practising and repractising his song against the
Springtime of New Talk, as they say.

In an Indian Jungle the seasons slide one into the other
almost without division. There seem to be only two--the wet
and the dry; but if you look closely below the torrents of
rain and the clouds of char and dust you will find all four
going round in their regular ring. Spring is the most wonderful,
because she has not to cover a clean, bare field with new leaves
and flowers, but to drive before her and to put away the
hanging-on, over-surviving raffle of half-green things which
the gentle winter has suffered to live, and to make the
partly-dressed stale earth feel new and young once more.
And this she does so well that there is no spring in the world
like the Jungle spring.

There is one day when all things are tired, and the very smells,
as they drift on the heavy air, are old and used. One cannot
explain this, but it feels so. Then there is another day--to the
eye nothing whatever has changed--when all the smells are new
and delightful, and the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to
their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in
long, draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little rain falls,
and all the trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses
and the juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise of growing that
you can almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night,
a deep hum. THAT is the noise of the spring--a vibrating boom
which is neither bees, nor falling water, nor the wind in tree-
tops, but the purring of the warm, happy world.

Up to this year Mowgli had always delighted in the turn of the
seasons. It was he who generally saw the first Eye-of-the-Spring
deep down among the grasses, and the first bank of spring
clouds, which are like nothing else in the Jungle. His voice
could be heard in all sorts of wet, star-lighted, blossoming
places, helping the big frogs through their choruses, or mocking
the little upside-down owls that hoot through the white nights.
Like all his people, spring was the season he chose for his
flittings--moving, for the mere joy of rushing through the warm
air, thirty, forty, or fifty miles between twilight and the
morning star, and coming back panting and laughing and wreathed
with strange flowers. The Four did not follow him on these wild
ringings of the Jungle, but went off to sing songs with other
wolves. The Jungle People are very busy in the spring, and
Mowgli could hear them grunting and screaming and whistling
according to their kind. Their voices then are different from
their voices at other times of the year, and that is one of the
reasons why spring in the Jungle is called the Time of New Talk.

But that spring, as he told Bagheera, his stomach was changed
in him. Ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he
had been looking forward to the morning when the smells should
change. But when the morning came, and Mor the Peacock, blazing
in bronze and blue and gold, cried it aloud all along the misty
woods, and Mowgli opened his mouth to send on the cry, the words
choked between his teeth, and a feeling came over him that
began at his toes and ended in his hair--a feeling of pure
unhappiness, so that he looked himself over to be sure that he
had not trod on a thorn. Mor cried the new smells, the other
birds took it over, and from the rocks by the Waingunga he heard
Bagheera's hoarse scream--something between the scream of an
eagle and the neighing of a horse. There was a yelling and
scattering of Bandar-log in the new-budding branches above,
and there stood Mowgli, his chest, filled to answer Mor,
sinking in little gasps as the breath was driven out of it
by this unhappiness.

He stared all round him, but he could see no more than the
mocking Bandar-log scudding through the trees, and Mor, his tail
spread in full splendour, dancing on the slopes below.


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