Читать книгу Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages онлайн

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She looked down at me, though I could not quite see her face.

"Then, good-night to you, Simon; and happy dreams," she said, in her unfriendly voice.

"I like the round room better and better," I replied as heartily as I could. "That picture of Mr. Nahum—and there are lots more, I think—is a little bit like an uncle of mine who died in Russia; my Uncle John."

"John's as good a name, I suppose, as any other, Simon," said Miss Taroone. She stood looking out on the dusky country scene. "There's a heavy dew tonight, and the owls are busy."

They were indeed. Their screechings sounded on all sides of me as I ran off homewards, chanting over to myself the words that had somehow stuck in my memory.

Well, at last I began to read in Mr. Nahum's book—I won't say page by page, but as the fancy took me. It consisted chiefly of rhymes and poems, and some of them had pictured capitals and were decorated in clear bright colours like the pages of the old books illuminated by monks centuries ago. Apart from the poems were here and there pieces of prose. These, I found, always had some bearing on the poems, and, like them, many of them were queerly spelt. Occasionally Mr. Nahum had jotted down his own thoughts in the margin. But the pictures were my first concern.