WHAT THE SUN DID NOT SEE—FOR FAR TOO LONG
"Once upon a time," said the Sun, "there was a meadow surrounded by a flint walk, where I caused the buttercups to shine like burnished gold, and where the grass was high and green and as long as the pony and the donkey who inhabited the meadow would allow it to be. Here and there was a cowslip; while near the house were hen-coops with old hens in them whose anxious heads protruded through the bars querulously shouting instructions to their fluffy children.
"Such," said the Sun, "was the meadow, which was interesting to me chiefly because it was the playground of a small but very vigorous and restless boy named Nobby, whose merry inquiring face it gave me peculiar pleasure to tan and to freckle.
"A small boy can do," said the Sun, "a thousand things in a meadow like this, even without the company of a donkey and a pony, and Nobby did them all; while his collection of performing wood-lice was unique.
"But a morning came when he was absent. I was shining at my best, the buttercups were glowing, there was even an aeroplane manœuvring in the blue—which is still, I notice, a certain lure to both young and old—but no Nobby. The wood-lice crept about or rolled themselves into balls, all unnoticed and immune.
"'This is very odd,' I heard the pony say; 'he's never neglected us before.'
"'Passing strange,' said the donkey, who affected archaic speech. 'And on so blithe and jocund a morn too.'
"So saying they resumed their everlasting meal, but continually turned their eyes to the garden-gate through which Nobby would have to pass. I also kept my eyes wide for him; but all in vain; and what made it more perplexing was that Nobby's mother came in and fed the chickens, and Nobby's aunt came in with a rug and a book and settled down to be comfortable; and that meant that the boy was not absent on a visit to the town, because one of them would have gone too.