poetry is, Bébée?"

"No."

"But your flowers talk to you?"

"Ah! always. But then no one else hears them ever but me; and so no one
else ever believes."

"Well, poets are folks who hear the flowers talk as you do, and the
trees, and the seas, and the beasts, and even the stones; but no one
else ever hears these things, and so, when the poets write them out, the
rest of the world say, 'That is very fine, no doubt, but only good for
dreamers; it will bake no bread.' I will give you some poetry; for I
think you care more about dreams than about bread."

"I do not know," said Bébée; and she did not know, for her dreams, like
her youth, and her innocence, and her simplicity, and her strength, were
all unconscious of themselves, as such things must be to be pure and true
at all.

Bébée had grown up straight, and clean, and fragrant, and joyous as one
of her own carnations; but she knew herself no more than the carnation
knows its color and its root,

"No. you do not know," said he, with a sort of pity; and thought within
himself, was it worth while to let her know?

If she did not know, these vague aspirations and imaginations would drop
off from her with the years of her early youth, as the lime-flowers drop