"Do you see, Christlieb?" "Do you hear, Felix?"
From out the deepest shades of the dark thicket which lay before the children, a wonderful luminousness began to shine, playing like moonlight over the leaves, which trembled in ecstasy. And through the whispering trees there came a sweet musical tone, like that which we hear when the wind awakens the chords slumbering within a harp. The children felt a sense of awe come over them. All their vexation had passed away from them; but tears of a sweet, unknown pain rose to their eyes.
As the radiance streamed brighter through the bushes, and the marvellous music-tones grew louder and louder, the children's hearts beat high: they gazed eagerly at the brightness, and then they saw, smiling at them from the thicket, the face of the most beautiful child imaginable, with the sun beaming on it in all its splendour.
"Oh, come to us!--come to us, darling child!" cried Christlieb and Felix, as they stretched their arms with indescribable longing towards the beautiful creature. "I am coming!--I am coming!" a sweet voice cried from the bushes; and then, as if borne on the wings of the morning breeze, the Stranger Child seemed to come hovering over to Christlieb and Felix.
HOW THE STRANGER CHILD PLAYED WITH FELIX AND CHRISTLIEB.
"I thought I heard you, out of the distance, crying and lamenting," said the Stranger Child, "and then I was very sorry for you. What is the matter, you dear children?--what is it you want?"
"Ah," Felix said, "we didn't quite know what it was that we did want! But now, as far as I can make out, what we wanted was just you yourself." "That is it!" Christlieb chimed in; "now that you are with us, we are happy again. Why were you so long in coming?"
In fact, both children felt as though they had known and played with the Stranger Child for a long time already, and that their unhappiness had been only because this beloved playmate was not with them.
"You see," Felix said, in continuation, "we really haven't got any playthings left; for I, like a stupid fool, went and destroyed a number of the very finest, which my cousin Pump-breeks gave me, and I shied them away. Never mind; we shall play somehow for all that."
"How can you talk so, Felix," said the Stranger Child, laughing aloud. "Certainly the stuff you threw away wasn't of much value; but you, and Christlieb too, are in the very middle of a quantity of the most exquisite play-things that were ever seen."