“Who are you? And what are you doing up here?” he cried to the father of one of the families which floated past.
“I’m Pater Familias,” came the answer, borne upon the wind. “And I and my dear ones are up here because we can’t be down below, on the ground.”
“Well, why can’t you?”
The Pater Familias steered his whole crew, table, bed and pots and pans and all, toward Peterkin. “We owe all our misery to——”
“What? To the toothless villain?” interrupted Peterkin.
The whole family groaned and the pots and pans leaped at the mention of this evil person. “Yes, yes, the toothless villain—the enemy of the Four Kingdoms!” wept the Pater Familias. “If it were not for him, we should now be down on the ground where we belong, living most sensible lives in our homes ... and not flying from horizon to horizon above the tree-tops. We were happiest of the Kingdoms.
“But one day, when we were folk of the earth, there came flying over our heads this wicked, toothless farmer—anyhow, he told us he was a farmer. He came down into our midst upon a grassy hill.
“‘Well, what do you love more than all else in this valley?’ he asked us.
“‘Ho, that’s an easy question!’ we told him. ‘We love to keep our feet upon the ground, as all good, sensible people should.’