“My poor, dear little Earth!” said the sun and looked at her kindly.
“Why do you bother about that clot?” asked one of the big stars. “Shine on us, who are worth shining on.”
“The earth is no clot to me,” replied the sun. “She is my child, like yourself and the others. And she is the youngest and therefore nearest to my heart. It is not so very many thousand years ago since she broke loose from me and sallied forth into the universe to tempt fortune single-handed. If only she behaves pluckily and does not lose heart, I shall have pleasure enough in her.”
The earth heard this and held out.
Year by year, the stone crust grew thicker, the water sank gradually into the ground and the land rose to the surface. But, even when the crust became so thick that the fire could not break through it just when and where it pleased, but had to make a regular effort when it wished to create a sensation, even then the earth’s trials were not over.
There was no order about her at all.
For instance, it was just as warm in Greenland as in Italy. Plenty of plants grew on the earth, but they were queer ones: ferns and horse-tails as tall as the tallest trees in the forest nowadays. There were animals too, but they were strange and uncanny creatures which we never meet with now except in the old fairy-tales. There were quadrupeds that were thirty yards long and swam in the water; and there were dragons that flew in the air and looked horrid.
And so it happened that it became ridiculously cold on the greatest part of the earth. Wherever one looked lay ice and snow; and the animals and plants died.
But then the fire broke out again, more violently than ever, and overturned hills and dales. Great new lands rose up out of the sea; and the sea swept its broad waves ruthlessly over the old lands.
No one could conceive what the end would be.