THE BABES IN THE WOOD.
"'What are you singing of, soft and mild,
Green leaves, waving your gentle hands?
Is it a song for a little child,
Or a song God only understands?'
Answered the green leaves, soft and mild,
Whispered the green leaves, soft and clear,—
'It is a song for every child,
It is a song God loves to hear;
It is the only song we know,
We never question how or why.
'Tis not a song of fear or woe,
A song of regret that we must die;
Ever at morn and at eventide
This is our song in the deep old wood,—
"Earth is beautiful, heaven is wide;
And we are happy, for God is good!"'"
F. E. Weatherly.
"Have you anything for us to do, Auntie Alice?" said Darby Dene one day, after he had watched Aunt Catharine safely into the fowl-house to have a look at her Brahmas.
It was a still, bright afternoon in October, when the ripe apples were dropping from the trees in the garden, and up at Copsley Farm Mrs. Grey's turkeys wandered at will over the stubble whence the grain had all been carted and built into stacks beside the farmyard.
"Do say that you can think of something, please," pleaded the boy—"a message or anything. We are so tired of the garden, and the lawn, and the swing, and—and—everything.—Aren't we, Joan?"
"Yes, werry, werry tired," agreed Joan with ready assent. She always did agree with everything that Darby said. He was her model, her hero, who, in Joan's eyes, could do no wrong.
"I'm afraid I cannot invent or suggest any fresh occupation for you just now," answered Auntie Alice, smiling down into the eager upturned faces beside her knee. "Would you not run away and have a romp with pussy? she is frolicking with her kittens in the garden, quite close to the tool-house."
"We were playing with pussy for ever so long, and look there!" said Darby, holding up for his aunt's inspection one small brown and not over-clean hand. Across the back of it ran a long, straight scratch from which the blood was slowly oozing. "That's what pussy did! That's why we left her, and why we don't want to go back to the garden."