Her blue, black-lashed eyes
rested happily on a great bough of scarlet and yellow maple leaves.
"I haven't got to say one _word_ about them," she breathed.
"_Nice_ leaves!"
Then she felt vaguely penitent; and in spite of the scenery, began
to think about Grandfather, and therefore poetry, again--so firm a
clutch has habit. There in the wonderful tingling air, with the late
sunset glimmering a little through the trees, an old poem began to
sing itself through her head. For, though she didn't think so, Joy
_did_ like poetry.
It was out of Bryant's "Library of Poetry and Song" that she had
been brought up on. The book always opened of itself under Joy's
hand to "Poems of Fancy."
"..._And I galloped and I galloped on my steed as white as milk,
My gown was of the grass-green and my shoes were of the silk,
My hair was golden-yellow, and it floated to my shoe,
My eyes were like two harebells dipped in little drops of dew_..."
Joy leaned herself back more luxuriously.
"It _is_ like the enchanted forest," she breathed. "I can
almost see the Lady in the poem galloping along, and the Green Gnome
leaping up to stop her. The path out there is wide enough--people
from the inn go riding on it. I remember their saying so, that old
lady with the daughter that wriggles too much."
At this stage in her meditations Joy laughed and ceased wishing. It
was all very well to desire Green Gnomes and golden-haired
fairy-ladies to gallop down the bridle-path, but the chances were
that if any one did come it would be the old lady and her daughter,
on livery horses, and that they would wish to alight and talk to
her.
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