HOODIE'S FOUNDLING.
"I almost think a robin
To a fairy I prefer."
Hoodie gazed round her condescendingly.
"I've such lots of stories in my head," she said. "They knock against each other. Well—I think I'll tell you a story of two little goblins. They lived in a star, and they were just e'zackly like each other. As like as two pins, or as like as a pin is to itself if you look at it in the looking-glass. They lived all alone in the star, and all day they stayed asleep like we do all night, but all night they were awake like we are all day, 'cos you see all day the star was shut up—like a shop, you know, only with curtains all round—all the stars are shut up like that all day, you know, and at night the moon wakes up and sends round to draw the curtains, and all the stars come out, rubbing their eyes."
"They hasn't any hands—how can they rub their eyes?" objected Duke.
"You silly boy," said Hoodie, very sharply. "How do you know? You've never been in the stars."
"But you hasn't neither," he persisted.
"Never mind. I know, and if I didn't I couldn't tell you. That's how people can tell stories. Well, the stars come out, lots and lots of them, and go running about all night, and then in the morning the moon sends round to draw all the curtains again and they're all to go to sleep."
"But some nights the moon isn't there and the stars are there without her. How is that, Hoodie?" said Cousin Magdalen, rather mischievously.
"You think so 'cos you don't know; but I do," said Hoodie, nodding her head sagaciously. "The moon's alvays there, only sometimes she has a cold, and then she wraps up her white face in a shawl and you can't see her."
There was a twinkle of fun in Hoodie's green eyes as she said this that showed her cousin that her little teasing was understood.
"Oh, indeed," she said, gravely, "I did not know. Thank you, Hoodie, for explaining to me."
"And so," continued Hoodie, "the goblins never saw anything of day things, but they saw very funny things at night when they went sailing about on the star."
"Stars don't go sailing about," objected Maudie. "They're always quite still."
"They're not then," said Hoodie: "that shows you don't listen, Maudie. I heard Papa say one day that the stars are going as fast as fast, only they go so fast that we can't see them."
"What nonsense! Isn't it nonsense, Cousin Magdalen?" pleaded Maudie.
"No," said Miss King. "It is true they are moving faster than we can even fancy, but the reason we can't see them moving isn't exactly what Hoodie says."
"What is it then?"
"I can't explain it to you just now—it would not be very easy for you to understand, and if I explained it, it would take too much time and we shouldn't hear the rest of Hoodie's story. I think we should let poor Hoodie go on with her story now without interrupting her any more."
Hoodie required no further bidding.
"Well," she said, "all night long the goblins went sailing about in the star, and sometimes they saw very funny things. They were up so high that they could look down and see everything, you know. They could see the big ponds up in the sky where the rain is made, and the awful big windmills up there where the wind blows from, and the cannons that bum the thunder down."
"Could they——?" began Duke, timidly, and then he stopped.
"Could they what?" said Hoodie, rather snappishly. "If peoples interrumpt, I wish they'd finish their interrumpting, and not stop in the middle."
