"What kind of things do you want to write down, Beth?" Aunt Grace Mary asked. Beth treated her quite as an equal, so they chatted the whole time they were together, unconstrainedly.
"Oh, you know—things like—well, the day we came here there were great grey clouds with crimson caps hanging over the sea, and you could see them in the water."
"See their reflection, you mean, I suppose."
Beth looked puzzled. "When you think of things, isn't that reflection?" she asked.
"Yes; and when you see yourself in the looking-glass, that's your reflection too," Aunt Grace Mary answered.
"Oh, then I suppose it was the sea's thought of the sky I saw in the water—that makes it nicer than I had it before," Beth said, trying to turn the phrase as a young bird practises to round its notes in the spring. "The sea shows its thoughts, the thought of the sea is the sky—no, that isn't right. It never does come right all at once, you know. But that's the kind of thing."
"What kind of thing?" Aunt Grace Mary asked, bewildered.
"The kind of thing I am always wanting to write down. You generally forget what we're talking about, don't you?—I say, don't you want to drive your own ponies yourself sometimes?"
"No, not when your dear uncle wants them."
"Dear uncle wants them almost always, doesn't he? Horner ses as 'ow——"