‘You’ll grow up a poet, Nixie,’ he said.
‘Shall I really? But I could never find the rhymes—simply never.’
‘Some never do,’ he answered; ‘and some—the majority, I think—never find the words even!’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ she exclaimed, her face clouding with a pain she could fully understand. ‘Poets who can’t talk at all. I should think they would burst.’
‘Some of them nearly do,’ he exclaimed, hiding a smile; ‘they get very queer indeed, these poor poets who cannot express themselves. I have known one or two.’
‘Have you? Oh, Uncle Paul!’ Her tone expressed all the solemn sympathy the world could hold.
He nodded his head mysteriously.
The child suddenly sat up very erect. An idea of importance had come into her head.
‘Then I wonder if Pouf and Smoke, and Zezette and Mrs. Tompkyns are like that,’ she cried, her face grave as a hanging judge—‘poets who can’t express themselves, and may burst and get queer! Because they understand all that sort of thing—scuttling leaves and dew falling, and tickling grasses and the dreams of beeties, and things we never hear at all. P’raps that’s why they lie and listen and think for such ages and ages. I never thought of that before.’
‘It’s quite likely,’ he replied with equal solemnity.