The Bush Babies come out of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest little things—fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and there, like stray feathers that have stuck to them.
"They haven't a stitch, But they never take cold."
The Piccaninnies love to play with them; indeed, they're favourites with everyone, and it's the prettiest sight in the world at early morning, to see each Bush Baby crawling out of its cradle flower on its little tummy, yawning or smiling or stretching, or blinking at the light with round sleepy eyes.
But you would never get up early enough to see that.
They tell a story in the Bush about a Bush Baby and a Piccaninny—and laugh about it to this day. The Piccaninny told the Bush Baby that he would find some honey for her. Now the Bush Babies love honey better than anything else in the world, so she put her hand in his sweetly and off they set.
They came to the edge of the swamp where the tall branching flax flowers grow (the flax is not in flower when the kowhai is, but I can't spoil my story for that), and every flax flower was alive with birds, dipping, and sipping the honey, so the two little creatures wandered off again.
The Piccaninny led the Bush Baby to several other flowers, but at every one some bird or insect would edge them away, crying out: