One wonderful, mysterious, summer evening thousands of fireflies were peopling the atmosphere. I had never seen so many before, and wanted to stay up and play with them. But the tyranny of the elders decreed that I should be put to bed at the customary hour, as if it had been any ordinary night.
I believe few of the elders retain the powers of childhood—which see far beyond the confines of the seen world—else why should they have insisted on my leaving this romantic world outside, which was beckoning me to join its revels?
However, they did put me to bed, and as usual told me to shut my eyes tight and go to sleep. But shutting one’s eyes does not make one go to sleep. On the contrary one sees many more things than before. The beauty of the night had intoxicated me. I was a part of nature, and she was claiming me for her own. There was a pond in our garden where frogs lived. They, too, must have felt the power of to-night’s beauty; for they were far more loquacious than usual. I listened to them for a long time—and presently I understood that they were talking to me.
“Get up, little girl!” they were saying. “Get up, little girl!”
For hours and hours they kept this up, now softly and insinuatingly, then swelling into loud command.
They ended by persuading me. I crept from my bed, put on my slippers, threw over my nighty the pink little wrap with its silk-lined hood, and went out on the balcony outside of my window. From there I slid down one of the columns, and, before I knew it, was on the ground.
Supreme moment of happiness! I was free—free to revel in the wonders of the night, free from vigilance and from orders. Clasping my wrap closely around me, I first went to the pond, and told the frogs that I was up.
“That’s right, little girl!” they answered me. “That’s right, little girl!” But that was all they had to say to me, so I left them and gave myself up to the deliciousness of being out of bed at an hour when all well-regulated children should be in bed—according to the laws of the elders.
The fireflies laughed and danced with me, twinkling in and out of the darkness. They seemed like thousands of little stars, who, tired of contemplating the world from heights above, like me had escaped vigilance, and, deserting the firmament, had slid down to the earth to play.
What a lot they had to say to me, these cheerful little sparks. On and on we wandered together. They always surrounded me—almost lifting me from the ground; and occasionally I succeeded in catching one and sticking it on my forehead, till I had quite a cluster, so close together that I must have looked like a cyclops, with one fiery eye in the middle of my forehead.