“It is lovely!” said Bess.
“There’s one word in it that I don’t like, though,” remarked aunt Puss, making her needles gleam in the firelight as they flew faster than ever.
“I know,” cried Kittie, catching her eye, “it’s ‘complainest’!”
Just then Tom came in, evidently from the guidance of Ruel, outside. His sisters were too much interested in the room and the poem to notice that his clothes were wet, as if he had been in the rain.
“Better come up by the fire, old fellow,” said Randolph, so quietly that the others did not hear. Tom started, but did as his cousin suggested, without a word.
“You are right, dear,” continued aunt Puss, “no bird ever ‘complains’.”
“Oh! but it’s just poetry, you know, Aunt,” said Bess eagerly. “Of course the birds don’t really complain—”
“Good poetry is always true,” said Mr. Percival. “Your aunt seems to me quite right, my girl. The lovely things that our Father has made should not be described as ‘complaining,’ even in fancy. After what is said in the Book, about sparrows, surely no bird ought to complain even of falling to the ground. The real secret of it was, I suspect, that the writer was himself in an unquiet mood, and made the ‘little bird in suit of sombre olive’ sing out his own discontent—as we are very apt to do.”
“But the rags—O, I see, I see, it’s just birch bark hanging on the trunks and boughs of the trees!”
“Let me see,” said uncle Percival, smiling, “whose favorite tree was the white birch, when we were talking around our pine-cone fire last winter?”