The Tortoise and the Hare

There was once a hare who was fast, and who knew it.

He was fast in the morning, when the grass was wet. He was fast in the afternoon, when everything else had gone to sleep in the shade. He could run from the old oak tree to the top of the hill before you had finished saying from the old oak tree to the top of the hill.

And because he was fast, he talked about it a great deal.

“Watch this,” he would say, to nobody in particular, and then he would be gone and back before anybody had looked up.

The other animals had got rather used to it, in the way you get used to weather.

The tortoise

The tortoise lived at the bottom of the meadow, near the stream, and she moved the way tortoises move, which is to say she moved.

One afternoon the hare zipped past her, stopped, came back, and ran a slow circle around her, twice, just to make the point.

“Do you know,” said the hare, “you have been crossing this meadow since breakfast?”

“I have,” said the tortoise.

“And you are still — “ the hare looked around “ — here.”

“I am.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

The tortoise thought about it. “No,” she said. “I’m going up the hill. I’ll get there.”

The hare laughed so hard he had to sit down.

“Would you like a race?” he said, when he could speak again. “You and me. Old oak tree to the top of the hill.”

“All right,” said the tortoise.

The hare stopped laughing. He had expected her to say no.

The race

Word went round the meadow the way word does. By the time the sun was high, the mice had come, and the badger, and a great many beetles, and an owl who was very tired and wanted everyone to know it.

The fox stood at the old oak tree and said, “Ready. Steady. Go.”

The hare went.

He was over the first rise before the tortoise had finished lifting her front foot. He was across the stream before the tortoise reached the end of the tree’s shadow. He ran until the cheering was a long way behind him, and then he stopped and looked back.

He could just see her: a small grey-brown lump at the bottom of the hill, moving so slowly that from up here she did not appear to be moving at all.

“Well,” said the hare.

The sun was warm. There was a patch of clover by the path, and it was very good clover.

I’ll eat a little, thought the hare. And then I’ll go.

He ate a little. Then he lay down in the clover, which is a thing that clover encourages you to do.

I’ll rest my eyes, thought the hare. Just for a minute. She won’t even be halfway.

And he fell asleep.

Up the hill

The tortoise did not stop.

She did not stop at the stream, though the water was cold and the stones were awkward. She did not stop at the steep bit where the path turned, though it was steep for a long time. She did not stop when she went past the hare, fast asleep in the clover with his ears twitching.

She looked at him. Then she carried on up the hill, one foot and then the next foot, and then the next.

She was slow. But she was slow the whole way, which turns out to be a very different thing from being fast some of the time.

The cheering woke the hare.

He opened one eye. The sun had moved a long way across the sky, which was strange. The clover was flattened where he had been lying.

And at the top of the hill, small against the blue, there was a shape that should not have been there yet.

The hare ran. He ran faster than he had ever run in his life, faster than he had ever bragged about running — up the path, over the steep bit, past the last of the trees.

He was too late.

The tortoise was standing at the top with the whole meadow cheering below her, looking out at the view, which was, she thought, very much worth the walk.

“How?” said the hare, when he had enough breath for one word.

“I kept going,” said the tortoise.

And that was the whole of it.