THE FINDING OF THE BOOK
“‘I shall let my children paint all day long,’” she read from the book.
Miss Crimson Lake was dimpling and smiling to herself. “What a bright, clever child!” she said. “How seldom one finds a child who really knows how beautiful I and my charming relatives are. I must show this book to Prussian Blue and Gamboge.”
“Stuff and rubbish! Pre-pos-ter-ous!” shouted the Major.
“I believe she says something about you,” said Miss Crimson Lake to Lucy.
“Something pleasant about ‘good little Lucy,’” said the Fraction, “and something unpleasant about me, I expect.”
“I read the first few lines,” said Miss Lake, “but I don’t think they struck me as altogether flattering.”
“Here is the page,” said the Fraction. “I’ll read it out: ‘As for pieces of poetry, I shall teach my children sense, not nonsense. I think “Good-night and Good Morning,” that piece about “Good little Lucy,” is nonsense, and there is too much of it; at least three too many verses. Who wants to know that
“The horses neighed and the oxen lowed,”
or that
“The sheep’s bleat, bleat, came over the road,
All seeming to say with a quiet delight,
Good little girl, good-night! good-night!”
and whoever in this world saw
“A tall pink foxglove bow his head,”
or
“A violet curtsey and go to bed?”
It is rubbish. No piece of poetry ought to have more than three verses, and I, for one, am heartily sick of “Good Little Lucy.”’”
“I thought it was not quite pleasant,” murmured Miss Crimson Lake.
