In that case , every day WILL be better than all that went before -- but there will be many days , dear lad and lass , when you will not believe it . '' We did not understand him , but we knew Uncle Blair never explained his meaning . When asked it he was wont to answer with a smile , `` Some day you 'll grow to it . Wait for that . '' So we addressed ourselves to follow the brook that stole away from the spring in its windings and doublings and tricky surprises . `` A brook , '' quoth Uncle Blair , `` is the most changeful , bewitching , lovable thing in the world . 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 XXXXX eternity is woven over it , surely , '' murmured Uncle Blair .
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