Stephen Wake shakes his head.
“Put him to bed, wife,” he says quietly; “the poor child is not himself. A good night’s sleep will set him all right again.”
And Berty Wake slept well. In the early morning, however, he arose and went out into the stable yard, where the laughing jackass nodded on his perch. [[324]]
“Hallo! Jack the Rover,” he said, saluting the bird.
The laughing jackass opened its sleepy eye and gazed meditatively at the boy for a few moments, then broke out into its hearty guffaw: “Ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho!!” [[325]]
HOP-O’-MY-THUMB.
Every one who knew Tiny Thumbcake loved him. He was one of eleven brothers and sisters, and the smallest mite that was ever born in the land of the cornstalk.
Tiny, though very diminutive in body, was nevertheless a hardy fellow who could run and jump like a kangaroo; moreover, he possessed the gift of knowing the language of all animals and birds, and these nicknamed him “Hop-o’-my-thumb.”
The Thumbcakes were poor people, and Tiny, who loved the wild bush, determined to try his fortune as a pioneer squatter. In conversation with an old wallaby, who used to pay him periodical visits, Tiny learned that there was a vast district owned by a giant aborigine named “Slubber,” where no white man had ever been and which was supposed by everybody to be a dreary wilderness without river, or lake, or anything to sustain life in the way of game. Tiny Thumbcake, or as we [[326]]shall call him, Hop-o’-my-thumb, was both surprised and delighted at the news imparted to him by the wallaby—namely, that the Unknown Country, ruled over by Slubber the Giant, was both beautiful and fertile, and one of the finest climates under the Southern Cross.