Whilst asleep in the wood she was awakened, so she declared, by a sound like the passage of a flight of storks, and, coming out of the wood, fearful of meeting a dragon, she began to pick the pretty flowers; then she was seized by the honorable gentleman, whose height was greater than a poplar tree.
How old was she? Eight times the cherry blossom had blown since her humble self had come into the world.
Then she volunteered the entirely unsolicited statement that it was likely her little boy companion had been lost in the snow. But that was impossible—well, it was a field of lilies then—and he had been most possibly devoured by a dragon.
What did she propose about going home? Did she know the way, and could she go alone?
Here she declared herself utterly at a loss. Her home was somewhere near by, but where, she could not exactly say.
“Well, well!” said M’Gourley, when he had finished his examination. “It seems to me that bogle or no bogle you’ve saddled yoursel’ wi’ a lost child. Whaur’s your common sense now?”
“Just where it always was.—Question is—what are we to do? Can you suggest anything?”
“Na, na! it’s not for me to say,” said the other, with that vile sense of satisfaction a brither Scot feels when a brither Scot has made a cubby of himself. Then, remembering the bond of partnership, “If I were the party responsible, I’d just pop her back where I fund her first, and rin.”
“Well, you are a beast! Why, you benighted old mummy-stuffer, I believe you’ve got a scarab in your bosom instead of a heart! I’ll take her along to Nikko, and get the police to hunt out her home. Stay, we haven’t asked her what’s her name.”
M’Gourley asked the question, and the Lost One declared her name to be “Bell-flower.”