“Hi! Hi!” screamed the rocket. “Keep your fingers to yourself, my friend! I feel as if I had been dipped in the pond. You needn’t be so angry, just because I ask you who you are.”
The mist rose up again:
“Who I am?” he repeated. “Why, you wouldn’t understand if I told you.”
“Try,” said the rocket.
“I am the dew-drop on the flowers, the cloud in the sky and the mist on the fields,” he answered.
“I beg your pardon?” said the rocket. “Would you mind saying that again? Why, I know the dew-drop. He settles on my petals every morning; and I don’t see any resemblance between you.”
“Ah, I am the dew-drop, for all that!” said the mist, sadly. “But nobody knows me. I have to spend my life in many shapes. Sometimes I am dew and sometimes I am rain and sometimes I trickle in the form of a clear, cool spring through the wood. But, when I dance over the meadow in the evening, then people say that the mist is rising.”
“That’s a queer story,” said the rocket. “Have you any more to tell me? The night is long and sometimes I feel a little bored.”
“It is a sad story,” answered the mist. “But you shall hear it if you like.”
And he made as though to lie down, but the night-scented rocket shook all her petals in alarm.