There will be many little things along our way to make us glad . Joyful sounds will ` come ringing down the wind ; ' a wealth of gypsy gold will be ours for the gathering ; we will learn the potent , unutterable charm of a dim spruce wood and the grace of flexile mountain ashes fringing a lonely glen ; we will tryst with the folk of fur and feather ; we 'll hearken to the music of gray old firs . Come , and you 'll have a ramble and an afternoon that you will both remember all your lives . '' We did have it ; never has its remembrance faded ; that idyllic afternoon of roving in the old Carlisle woods with the Story Girl and Uncle Blair gleams in my book of years , a page of living beauty . Yet it was but a few hours of simplest pleasure ; we wandered pathlessly through the sylvan calm of those dear places which seemed that day to be full of a great friendliness ; Uncle Blair sauntered along behind us , whistling softly ; sometimes he talked to himself ; we delighted in those brief reveries of his ; Uncle Blair was the only man I have ever known who could , when he so willed , `` talk like a book , '' and do it without seeming ridiculous ; perhaps it was because he had the knack of choosing `` fit audience , though few , '' and the proper time to appeal to that audience . We went across the fields , intending to skirt the woods at the back of Uncle Alec 's farm and find a lane that cut through Uncle Roger 's woods ; but before we came to it we stumbled on a sly , winding little path quite by accident -- if , indeed , there can be such a thing as accident in the woods , where I am tempted to think we are led by the Good People along such of their fairy ways as they have a mind for us to walk in . `` Go to , let us explore this , '' said Uncle Blair . `` It always drags terribly at my heart to go past a wood lane if I can make any excuse at all for traversing it : for it is the by-ways that lead to the heart of the woods and we must follow them if we would know the forest and be known of it . When we can really feel its wild heart beating against ours its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own for ever , so that no matter where we go or how wide we wander in the noisy ways of cities or over the lone ways of the sea , we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship . '' `` I always feel so SATISFIED in the woods , '' said the Story Girl dreamily , as we turned in under the low-swinging fir boughs . `` Trees seem such friendly things . '' `` They are the most friendly things in God 's good creation , '' said Uncle Blair emphatically . `` And it is so easy to live with them . To hold converse with pines , to whisper secrets with the poplars , to listen to the tales of old romance that beeches have to tell , to walk in eloquent silence with self-contained firs , is to learn what real companionship is . Besides , trees are the same all over the world . A beech tree on the slopes of the Pyrenees is just what a beech tree here in these Carlisle woods is ; and there used to be an old pine hereabouts whose twin brother I was well acquainted with in a dell among the Apennines . Listen to those squirrels , will you , chattering over yonder . Did you ever hear such a fuss over nothing ? Squirrels are the gossips and busybodies of the woods ; they have n't learned the fine reserve of its other denizens . But after all , there is a certain shrill friendliness in their greeting . ''
`` They seem XXXXX be scolding us , '' I said , laughing .
after against along as at down for that through to