"The stupid brook!"
he exclaimed. "It was so stupid as to be almost human."
"I knew you wouldn't like it," she said, looking up at him in
surprise.
"I like your singing and the music, but that brook provokes me,
the little idiot! Why didn't it stop before?"
"I take the brook's part," said Ida. "Because the violet gazed at
it in a lackadaisical way was no reason for its stopping unless it
wanted to. Indeed, if I were the violet I should want the brook
to go on, unless it couldn't help stopping."
"It did stop when it couldn't help itself, and then it was too
late," said Van Berg, with a frown.
Ida trilled out one of her sudden laughs, as she said, "Don't take
the matter so to heart, Mr. Van Berg. When spring came the brook
went on as merrily as ever, and was well contented to have other
violets look at it."
"Miss Ida, you are a witch," said the artist, and with an odd,
involuntary gesture he passed his hand across his brow as if to
brush away a mist or film from his mind.
"Oh!" thought Ida, with passionate longing, "may my spells hold,
or else I may feel like following the example of the silly little
violet." But she pirouetted up to her father, who was just entering,
and said: "It's time you came, father.
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