It was a pleasant plan for a May morning.
I lost no time in putting it into practice. Involuntarily I sought that corner of the orchard in which I had seen my small friend. Mindful of his counsel, I got close to the apple blossoms and smelled them. As I did so I noticed a crumpled sheet of paper in a crotch of one of the trees. I no sooner saw it than I seized it, and, smoothing it out, read, written in a primary-school hand:—
"The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you."
Need I say that I had scarcely read this before I entered upon an exhaustive search among the other trees? My amused efforts were well rewarded. Between two flower-laden branches I descried another "poem," in identical handwriting:—
"A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window-sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said
'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!'"
In a tiny hollow I found still another, by the same hand:—
"'T was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
As I went back to the house, bearing my findings, I met my little boy friend. He tried not to see what I carried.
"I gathered these from the apple trees," I said, holding out the verses.
"They are poems."
He made no motion to take the "poems." His eyes danced. But neither then did he say nor since has he said that the verses were his; that he was the Orlando who had caused them to grow upon the trees.