“A yawn!” insisted the mild man, who had not removed his slumbrous eyes from Kitty’s face. “Only a very few know the pleasure of a yawn. There is yawning and yawning.”
“Ye—es!” yawned the naughty sprite—“dee—li—cious!”
“Do not put off any longer!” whispered the guardian child, pulling Kitty’s hair to wake her up. But Kitty felt as if lead were at her heels.
“Just one moment and I’ll make up for the delay,” she murmured.
The flabby mild man continued speaking in a monotonous sorrowful voice. “Very few know how to yawn. Some yawn only when they cannot help it. They slur it and blur it, and go to sleep over it. Some are ashamed of yawning and conceal their faces; some”—and now a flicker of reproachful animation brightened the dreamy eyes of the speaker—“yes, some swallow their yawns.”
“I am doing that now,” said Kitty, who had never felt so drowsy in all her life. She heard, as at a distance, her guardian child’s voice sighing, “The star is disappearing!—the star is disappearing!”
“Come, give us a lesson in real yawning,” said the naughty sprite caressingly.
“Real yawning requires time and deliberation,” said the flabby man in an up-and-down voice. “You must begin at the beginning; you must go on to the end. First you will feel a little shiver, like a caress of velvet hands on your forehead; your mouth will open, then all your being will seem to grew larger, and wider, and longer. Every sense of hurry and flurry will pass away; still your mouth will open wider and wider, till it comes to a delicious gape.”
“Ya—aw—aw—awn!” the naughty sprite was yawning. His ears dropped behind his wide-swelling neck; his body was stretched: his month was—open—open, showing all his pointed white teeth down to his red throat.