“Not one of them stirred; and that was pretty stupid.
“Then he saw something interesting; his own little foot with the sunbeam resting on it, as he sat with his toes pointing straight up at the roof. He looked at it for a moment, and frowned as if he were anxious. Then he leaned forward and felt of it.
“It was a perfectly good foot; and feet are made to be walked on; and it is much more amusing to be walking than sitting on a mat in a dusky hut like a bird-cage. That, probably, is the idea that came into the Bee Baby’s head when he found his foot was so satisfactory; and a big dimple came in his cheek, but he didn’t make any noise.
“To get up, he rolled over on to his face and planted his feet firmly, only when they were quite solid, lifting his hands from the ground. And there he was, all dressed and ready to go out. He trotted over to the doorway and stopped a minute, looking out.
“The hut stood on the edge of a grove of tall cocoanut trees. There were bananas growing among them; and vines with gorgeous orange and red flowers creeping everywhere. Black and spotted pigs ran grunting through the vines and about the huts of the little village; it all looked clean and fresh in the early sunlight. The Bee Baby’s was the last hut of the village, at the edge of the grove, that stretched on beyond it, up the slope of Xyntli’s mountain.
“When one is not much over two years old, one can’t think of everything, and the Bee Baby didn’t notice that which the older people had been watching for a month—Xyntli was awake!
“After a sleep of two hundred years—and more—one night she had stirred and turned herself, shaking her mountain and the village on its slope. The next morning a thin, gray streamer floated from the top of the cone; and the old people said: ‘Xyntli’s veil! Oh, when she sees—’ And they shook their heads.
“Since that day the veil had floated, sometimes like a broad banner, then again Xyntli drew it in until it was gathered down inside. But yet, she had not looked out and seen how the forests and streams were defacing her mountain.
“And the Bee Baby didn’t look up at the great blue triangle. The kitchen was at the right of the house; and he had a feeling that said: ‘Breakfast.’ So those good little feet carried him over to the big stone where the women ground corn to make the flat cakes that he liked to nibble with his brand-new teeth. The stone oven where they were baked was there too; and the Bee Baby found some cakes lying on the grinding-stone. He had to stand on his tiptoes and feel over the stone, to find them; but he knew where to feel, and where to find a banana, too. So why should he wake the cook?
“With the flat cakes in one hand and the bitten banana in the other, he set out, following the level sunbeams into the green grove. He knew just where he wanted to go, and trotted straight on until he came to an old tree.