"Oh, but let us just fly a little, as we did yesterday," Felix prayed.
"Yes," said Christlieb, "but not quite so high. It makes my head so giddy."
Then the Stranger Child took them by the hands again, and they went soaring up into the golden purple of the evening sky, while the birds crowded and sang round them. That was a shouting and a jubilating! In the shining clouds Felix saw, as if in wavering flame, beautiful castles all of rubies and other precious stones. "Look! look! Christlieb!" he cried, full of rapture, "look at all those splendid palaces! Let us fly along as fast as we can, and we shall get to them." Christlieb saw the castles too, and forgot her fear, as she was not looking down, this time, but up before her.
"Those are my beloved air-castles," the Stranger Child said. "But I don't think we shall get any further to-day.".
Felix and Christlieb seemed to be in a dream, and could not make out at all how they came to find themselves, presently, with their father and mother.
CONCERNING THE STRANGER CHILD'S HOME.
In the most beautiful part of the wood beside the brook, between whispering bushes, the Stranger Child had set up a most glorious tent, made of tall, slender lilies, glowing roses, and tulips of every hue; and beneath this tent Felix and Christlieb were sitting with the Stranger Child, listening to the forest-brook as it went on whispering the strangest things imaginable.
"I'll tell you, darling boy," Felix said, "I can't properly understand all that he, there, is saying; but I somehow feel that you could tell me, clearly and distinctly, what it is that he goes on murmuring. But most of all I should like you to tell me where it is that you come from, and where it is that you go away to, so fast, so fast, that we never can make out how you do it."
"Do you know, sweetest girl," said Christlieb, "our mother thinks you are the schoolmaster's boy, Gottlieb."
"Hold your tongue, stupid thing!" Felix cried. "Mother has never seen this darling boy, or she wouldn't have talked about the schoolmaster's Gottlieb. But come now, tell me where it is that you live, dear boy; fur we want to go and see you at your home in the winter time, when it storms and snows, and nobody can trace a track in the woods."