“‘The rainbows are her thoughts, and the mists rising from the quiet meadows are her meditations and her prayers. Her laughter is in the sound of brooks, and she breathes in the warmth that exhales from the earth, after it is dusk in Summer. The lightning is her anger, and in the thunder she finds utterance, and the darkness of the night is her great mantle over the land.’” Miss Ross ceased speaking, and there was silence for a time. Then Christopher said: “And what are the earthquakes?” “Perhaps when she yawns,” said Bim. Children often save people trouble by giving themselves a reply. Miss Ross had a large white book on her lap, she was turning the pages. “I like this book of your Mother’s,” she said; “these phrases are from the writings of an old herbalist, and he speaks of the lime-leaf that ‘in Autumn becomes wan, and spotted as the doe.’ “‘The wyche-elme whose gold is let loose on the wind after night frostes, and cold dawnes. “‘The delicate jargonell that keeps the sweets of France in old, warm, English gardens.’ “And further on he writes of ‘the sloe whose excellent purple blood makes so fine a comfort.’ “He speaks of the ‘green smockt filberte,’ and finally talks in this pleasant manner of the nature of mushrooms. “‘Many do fear the goodly musherooms as poysonous damp weeds. But this doth in no ways abate the exceeding excellence of God’s Providence, that out of the grass and dew where nothing was, and where only the little worm turned in his sporte, come, as at the shaking of bells, these delicate meates.’ “The older you grow, children,” Miss Ross said, looking up from the book, “the more pleasure you will find in comfortable words. In well-adjusted phrase, and in lines that have beauty in their sound as in their imagery. I have found nourishment for the soul in the positive satisfaction to be derived from words. ‘With how slow steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies, How silently, and with how wan a face,’ and-- ‘A world of leafage, murmurous and a-twinkle The green, delicious, plentitude of June.’ And these lines seem to me full of music. ‘O, Philomela fair, O, take some gladness, That here is juster cause for plaintful sadness. Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth. Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.” “These are only a few of the many fragments I have in my memory.” “But poetry is nearly always so sad,” said Bimbo. “I like things with jokes in them.”