Mrs. Avory laughed, and Nino said: "What is the poetry about?"
"I think," replied Fräulein, shaking out her table-napkin, and tucking it carefully into her collar, "it is about her broken doll and her dead canary."
"Is the canary dead?" exclaimed Valeria. "Why did you not tell me?"
"She shall have a new doll," said Mrs. Avory, "at once."
"But it isn't—she hasn't—they are not!" explained Fräulein, much confused. "Only she says she cannot write a poetry about things that are not broken and dead."
The old grandfather, who now rarely spoke, raised his head, and said mournfully, "Broken and dead—broken and dead," and went on repeating the words all through lunch, until he was coaxed and scolded into silence.
There was much excitement over Nancy's poem that afternoon. It was read aloud by Edith, and then by Valeria, and then by Fräulein, and then again by Edith. Valeria improvised a translation of it into Italian for Zio Giacomo and Nino; and then it was read aloud once more by Edith. Everybody laughed and wept; and then Valeria kissed everybody. Nancy was a genius! They had always known it. Zio Giacomo said that it was in his brother's family; whereupon Mrs. Avory said, "Indeed?" and raised her eyebrows and felt hurt. But how—said Valeria—had it come into Nancy's head to write a poem? And what if she were never to be able to write another? Such things had happened. Could she try again and write something else? Just now! Oh, anything!... Saying how she wrote this poem, for instance!
So little Nancy, all flushed and wild and charming, extemporized in Fräulein's note-book:
"This morning in the orchard
I chased the fluttering birds:
The winging, singing things I caught—
Were words!
"This morning in the garden
Where the red creeper climbs,
The vagrant, fragrant things I plucked—
Were rhymes!