'T is an enchanted spot this , I am very sure , and we should go softly , speaking low , lest we disturb the rest of a white , wet naiad , or break some spell that has cost long years of mystic weaving . '' `` It 's so easy to believe things in the woods , '' said the Story Girl , shaping a cup from a bit of golden-brown birch bark and filling it at the spring . `` Drink a toast in that water , Sara , '' said Uncle Blair . `` There 's not a doubt that it has some potent quality of magic in it and the wish you wish over it will come true . '' The Story Girl lifted her golden-hued flagon to her red lips . Her hazel eyes laughed at us over the brim . `` Here 's to our futures , '' she cried , `` I wish that every day of our lives may be better than the one that went before . '' `` An extravagant wish -- a very wish of youth , '' commented Uncle Blair , `` and yet in spite of its extravagance , a wish that will come true if you are true to yourselves . 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 XXXXX every root that interfered with it .
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