It is never in the same mind or mood two minutes . Here it is sighing and murmuring as if its heart were broken . But listen -- yonder by the birches it is laughing as if it were enjoying some capital joke all by itself . '' It was indeed a changeful brook ; here it would make a pool , dark and brooding and still , where we bent to look at our mirrored faces ; then it grew communicative and gossiped shallowly over a broken pebble bed where there was a diamond dance of sunbeams and no troutling or minnow could glide through without being seen . Sometimes its banks were high and steep , hung with slender ashes and birches ; again they were mere , low margins , green with delicate mosses , shelving out of the wood . Once it came to a little precipice and flung itself over undauntedly in an indignation of foam , gathering itself up rather dizzily among the mossy stones below . It was some time before it got over its vexation ; it went boiling and muttering along , fighting with the rotten logs that lie across it , and making far more fuss than was necessary over every root that interfered with it . We were getting tired of its ill-humour and talked of leaving it , when it suddenly grew sweet-tempered again , swooped around a curve -- and presto , we were in fairyland . It was a little dell far in the heart of the woods . A row of birches fringed the brook , and each birch seemed more exquisitely graceful and golden than her sisters . The woods receded from it on every hand , leaving it lying in a pool of amber sunshine . The yellow trees were mirrored in the placid stream , with now and then a leaf falling on the water , mayhap to drift away and be used , as Uncle Blair suggested , by some adventurous wood sprite who had it in mind to fare forth to some far-off , legendary region where all the brooks ran into the sea . `` 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 XXXXX .
Blair Carlisle fairyland mayhap minnow minutes mosses sunbeams troutling vexation