“Daddy,” she said, “why are some roses red and some white?”
It was the ancient unanswerable question of the mystery of colour. Who is there that has answered or can answer it? A mother might have done better, but what could a mere father do but temporise?
“I will tell you, Eva,” I said, “when you can tell me why sister’s hair is black and yours is golden.”
This sibylline answer, I was relieved to find, made a profound impression upon Eva, and as we continued up the wood she was evidently pondering it in the unfathomable deeps of her baby brain. Her meditation, however, soon gave place to curiosity and questioning about everything that grew or sang or moved in the wood. Every child is a naturalist, and the great charm of naturalists is that they always remain children, never losing their sense of wonder at the little elusive things that run and hop and chirp in the grass, or float flower-like upon the air. The naturalist has come nearer to the secret of eternal youth—which is mainly eternal enthusiasm—than any poet, and he who at fifty still pursues a rare species with unabated ardour need never fear old age.
I can make no pretense of being a learned naturalist, and the names of many a bird and flower I love often escape me—as one often forgets the name of some charming acquaintance, whom none the less one is delighted to meet again. I am content to go up the wood in entire ignorance of the Latin and even English names of the various presences that fill it with leafage and perfume and song; but Eva is of a different temper. She is an exact scientist, and insists on knowing the name and the how and the why of every leaf and flower and insect that crosses our path. She even expects me to know what the birds are saying, as though I were the old Virgilian Asylas, who talked the language of birds as easily as some old scholar can read Latin; or Melapus:
With love exceeding a simple love of the things
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck.
When I am a little indefinite in my explanations, she gives me a look which makes me tremble for her continued belief in my omniscience; and so, when for the third time she asked me what a certain bird was saying, I felt that I must do something to retain her respect. So I extemporised.
“This is what he is saying,” I answered: “Be quick—Be quick—Be quick—Quick! Be quick!... Sweet!—Sweet!—Sweet!... Sweet-i-ki!—Sweet-i-ki!—Sweet-i-ki!... Chuck-chuck!—Twe-ey—Twe-ey—Twe-ey!”
This translation seemed entirely satisfactory to Eva, and she made me repeat it several times, so that with her rapacious baby memory she might get it by heart. She presently disconcerted me, however, by asking me to tell her what that other bird on the bough there was saying.
“It doesn’t sound the same as the other,” she said, or meant in more babylike words. (The realism of baby talk I am obliged to leave to greater writers.)