If Hare expected too much of himself, while exerting the least possible effort, then a lifetime of misery was quite certain, and this suited him just fine. And yet he also seemed to be curiously attracted to dense thickets and tangles of branches and darkened webs, non-habitats in perpetual disuse, places that no-one frequented, places not quite miserable as much as altogether undesirable – and yet he plunged in and through with much dramatic force, to a certain end – and when he reached, as he always did, the opening behind the enclosed wood, with splinters and twigs combed into his ruffled fur, he had an odd sense of having done quite well, succeeding rather, in what he had meant to do – and yet this success did not amount to much, unrelated as it was to the living part of the forest, an uncharted adventure in unloved terrain.
