“And this is the tale he told:—
“ ‘When I was very young, and very, very tiny, I lay upon the bosom of my mother, the Ocean. And many a time when I was inclined to be fretful, because the wind ruffled my spray-like hair, she gently rocked me off to sleep. [[99]]
A RAIN FAIRY.
[[101]]
“ ‘Then came a day when the sun held out his hands and arms to me in such a winning fashion, that before I knew what he was doing, he had lifted me up and placed me in the downy folds of a fleecy cloud.
“ ‘At first I felt a little frightened, especially when I peeped down at the great big moving world beneath.
“ ‘But very soon I perceived that there were quite a number of us being carried by the cloud, and as we were all in the same boat, so to speak, it was not long before we became quite friendly.
“ ‘As the days went by we often talked about the things over which we passed, and many a time we wondered what some of them meant.
“ ‘Very strangely, perhaps, the higher we were taken into the air, the better our eyesight became; until, like ocean birds, we could see right down into the deepest deeps of the sea. It was, therefore, not at all difficult for us to pick out all kinds of things not usually seen from the surface of the water, or even from the top of a ship’s mast.