Page:The Story of Opal.djvu/183

 scraps in their dinner-pails. Some have knowing of the needs I do have for scraps in the nursery and the hospital. And too, when they come home from work in the far woods, the men do bring bits of moss and nice velvet caterpillars and little rocks. Some do. And these they give to me for my nature collections. And I feel joy feels all over. Brave Horatius does bark joy barks. He does know and I do know the folks that live in the lumber camps—they are kindly folks.

Morning is glad on the hills. I hear a song like unto the song of the verdier. The sky sings in blue tones. The earth sings in green. I am so happy. The mamma is gone for a visit away. Before her going she did set me to mind the baby. I do so. In between times I print, and I do spell over and over the words in my two books Angel Father and Angel Mother did make. I sing-song the letters of the words when I go adown the road. So I do when I am in the house when the mamma is n't at home. I do not so when she is at home, because she won't let me.

Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning is calling me out in the pasture. I expect she wants an apple or a sugar-lump. But I cannot have goes out there to the pasture because the mamma did say for me to mind the baby and mind the house. I sing to the baby words out of the two books and the song about Iraouaddy and the bird-song of grandpère.