book I can't quite understand. I want you to
tell me what it means, if you please."

"I will if I can," answered Mr. Raymond. "You shall read it to me when
we get home, and then I shall see."

Still with a good many blunders, Diamond did read it after a fashion.
Mr. Raymond took the little book and read it over again.

Now Mr. Raymond was a poet himself, and so, although he had never been
at the back of the north wind, he was able to understand the poem pretty
well. But before saying anything about it, he read it over aloud, and
Diamond thought he understood it much better already.

"I'll tell you what I think it means," he then said. "It means that
people may have their way for a while, if they like, but it will get
them into such troubles they'll wish they hadn't had it."

"I know, I know!" said Diamond. "Like the poor cabman next door. He
drinks too much."

"Just so," returned Mr. Raymond. "But when people want to do right,
things about them will try to help them. Only they must kill the snake,
you know."

"I was sure the snake had something to do with it," cried Diamond
triumphantly.

A good deal more talk followed, and Mr. Raymond gave Diamond his
sixpence.

"What will you do with it?" he asked.

"Take it home to my mother," he answered. "She has a teapot--such a
black one!--with a broken spout, and she keeps all her money in it. It
ain't much; but she saves it up to buy shoes for me. And there's baby
coming on famously, and he'll want shoes soon. And every sixpence is
something--ain't it, sir?"

"To be sure, my man. I hope you'll always make as good a use of your
money."

"I hope so, sir," said Diamond.

"And here's a book for you, full of pictures and stories and poems. I
wrote it myself, chiefly for the children of the hospital where I hope
Nanny is going. I don't mean I printed it, you know. I made it," added
Mr. Raymond, wishing Diamond to understand that he was the author of the
book.

"I know what you mean. I make songs myself. They're awfully silly, but
they please baby, and that's all they're meant for."

"Couldn't you let me hear one of them now?" said Mr. Raymond.

"No, sir, I couldn't. I forget them as soon as I've done with them.
Besides, I couldn't make a line without baby on my knee. We make them
together, you know. They're just as much baby's as mine. It's he that
pulls them out of me."

"I suspect the child's a genius," said the poet to himself, "and that's
what makes peopl