"Down in the marshes the sounds begin
Of a far-away fairy violin,
Faint and reedy and cobweb thin.
"Cricket and marsh-frog and brown tree-toad,
Sit in the sedgy grass by the road,
Each at the door of his own abode;
"Each with a fairy fiddle or flute
Fashioned out of a briar root;
The fairies join their notes, to boot.
"Sitting all in a magic ring,
They lift their voices and sing and sing,
Because it is April, 'Spring! Spring!'"
"That is a nice one!" Kirk agreed. "It sounds real. I don't know how you can do it."
A faint clapping was heard from the direction of the house, and turning, Ken saw his sister dropping him a curtsey at the door. "That," she said, "is a poem, not a pome--a perfectly good one."
"Go 'way!" shouted Ken. "You're a wicked interloper. And you don't even know why Kirk and I write pomes about toads, so you don't!"
"I never could see," Ken remarked that night, "why people are so keen about beds of roses. If you ask me, I should think they'd be uncommon prickly and uncomfortable. Give me a bed of herbs--where love is, don't you know?"
"It wasn't a bed of herbs," Felicia contended; "it was a dinner of them. This isn't herbs, anyway. And think of the delectable smell of the bed of roses!"
"But every rose would have its thorn," Ken objected. "No, no, 'herbs' is preferable."