Yet never pass me by.’
‘Of course, of course,’ she whispered, listening half to her uncle, half to the rustle in the branches. ‘And now,’ she added presently, ‘you can always come and write your poetry here, and it will be very-wonderfulindeed poetry, you see. And if you leave a bit of paper on the tree you’ll find it in the morning covered with all sorts of things in very fine writing—oh, but very very fine writing, so small that no one can see it except you and me. One of the Little Winds we saw, you know, will twine round it and leave marks. And the big pine is you and the birch is me, isn’t it?’ she ended with sudden conviction.
The game, of course, was after her own heart. Up she sprang then suddenly again, picked a spray of leaves from a hanging branch, and brought it back to him.
‘And here’s a bit of me for a present, so that you can’t ever forget,’ she said with a gravity that held no smile. And she fastened it with much tugging and arranging in his buttonhole. ‘A bit of my tree, and so of me.’
‘Then I might leave a bit of paper in the water too,’ he remarked slyly on their way home, ‘so as to get the thoughts of the stream.’
‘Easily,’ she said, ‘only it must be wrapped up in something. I’ll get Jonah’s sponge-bag and lend it you. Only you must promise faithfully to return it in case we go to the seaside in the summer.’
‘And perhaps some of those tears we were talking about will stick on it and leave their marks before they go on to the sea,’ he suggested.
‘Oh, but they’d be too sad,’ she answered quickly. ‘They’re much better lost in the sea, aren’t they?’
Thus the poetry in his soul that he could not utter, he lived.