[“It—it is a poem], isn’t it, mother?” she said shyly.
But the mother laughed,—for once in her life she was unsympathetic, and had no intuition as to the feelings of her little girl on this occasion. It seemed [191] ]only a funny thing to her that the child should write anything in verse.
“Oh, you little goose, Dolly,” she said. “When did you ever see a bird’s nest built of quills?”
Dolly looked a trifle saddened.
“[It—it is a poem, isn’t it, mother?]”
“It had to be something to go with bill,” she said, and sighed. She was recollecting the struggle she had had with the word, and even now one word had an “s” and the other was without; yet it was impossible to make bill plural or quills singular.
The mother laughed again.
“And why did you call it ‘By the Sea’?” she said. “There’s not a wave in it anywhere.”
[192]
]“It sounded so nice,” Dolly said forlornly.