"Oh, what a lovely place!" I exclaimed, looking around me with delight.
"A spell of eternity is woven over it, surely," murmured Uncle
Blair. "Winter may not touch it, or spring ever revisit it. It
should be like this for ever."
"Let us never come here again," said the Story Girl softly,
"never, no matter how often we may be in Carlisle. Then we will
never see it changed or different. We can always remember it just
as we see it now, and it will be like this for ever for us."
"I'm going to sketch it," said Uncle Blair.
While he sketched it the Story Girl and I sat on the banks of the
brook and she told me the story of the Sighing Reed. It was a
very simple little story, that of the slender brown reed which
grew by the forest pool and always was sad and sighing because it
could not utter music like the brook and the birds and the winds.
All the bright, beautiful things around it mocked it and laughed
at it for its folly. Who would ever look for music in it, a
plain, brown, unbeautiful thing? But one day a youth came through
the wood; he was as beautiful as the spring; he cut the brown reed
and fashioned it according to his liking; and then he put it to
his lips and breathed on it; and, oh, the music that floated
through the forest! It was so entrancing that everything--brooks
and birds and winds--grew silent to listen to it.
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