"Take me away now," he beseeched; "I'm tired."
The fun was then getting fast and furious; but Tom and the boy slipped out as quietly as they had come, and in a few minutes more Johnnie Greybreeks found himself once more out in the snow. As he passed through the gate, he paused to look back.
"Heigh-ho!" he sighed; "I've been in fairy-land. What a story I should have to tell mother and Siss! only, long before I get home I shall wake and find it is all a dream."
Then away he went, feathering through the snow, and keeping a good hold on his bundle, but nevertheless expecting every minute to awake and find himself in his own bed.
* * * * *
It is needless to say that Jack didn't awake, and that his adventure wasn't a dream; and it is quite impossible to describe the astonishment of his mother and sister when he told all his wonderful story.
That Christmas dinner, next day, was the best and most delightful ever Jack or his little sister Maggie could remember partaking of since they had come to reside at No. 73 Summer Loaning.
Summer Loaning, indeed! what a cruel misnomer! Well, to be sure, there might have been a time away back in the past when this street was a kind of loaning, or even a lover's lane leading right away out into the cool country. Green hedges might have grown where now stood houses gaunt and grey and grim; hedges of wild hawthorn, trailed over in summer-time with dog-roses pink and red; hedges in which birds in early spring may have sung—the sweet wee linnet, the spotted mavis, the mellow blackbird, or madly-lilting chaffinch. Trees, too, may have waved their branches over Summer Loaning—the rustling ash and the oak and chestnut, and the spreading rowan to which the poet sings and says,—
"Thy leaves were aye the first o' spring,
Thy flowers the simmer's pride;
There wasna sic a bonnie tree
In a' the country-side."
Yes, this may have been the case long, long ago; but now, alas! the change.