"I told him I couldn't tell until I had eaten them."
"And what did he say?" put in the tiger lily, with a grin.
"He said that wasn't the answer; that one was blue and the other was green, but how a red blackberry can be green I can't see," replied the voice up in the tree.
Jimmieboy smiled quietly at this, and the voice up the tree continued:
"Then he asked me what color blueberries were, and I told him they were blue; then he said he'd bet a mosquito I couldn't tell him what color huckleberries were, and when I said they were of a delicate huckle he laughed, and said I owed him a mosquito. I may owe him a mosquito, but I haven't an idea what he was laughing at."
"That's easy," said the holly-hock. "He was laughing because there isn't any such color as huckle."
"I don't think that's funny, though," said the voice in the tree. "Indeed, I think it's sad, because it seems to me that a very pretty color could be made out of huckle. Why do you suppose there isn't any such color?"
The lily and the rose and holly-hock bushes were silent for a moment, and then they said they didn't know.
"I'm glad you don't," said the tree voice. "I'm glad to find that there are some things you don't know. Just think how dreadful it would be if you knew everything. Why, if you knew everything, nobody could tell you anything, and then there'd never be any news in the world, and when you heard a joke you couldn't ever laugh because you'd have known it before."
Here Jimmieboy, impressed by the real good sense of this remark, leaned out of the hammock and peered up into the tree to see if possible who or what it was that was speaking.