'Stop, stop!' cried the professor, 'he is doing something odd.'
The child had taken out of his pocket certain small black stones of a peculiar shape. So absorbed was he that he never noticed the presence of the men.
He kissed the stones and arranged them in a curious pattern on the floor, still kneeling, and keeping his eye on Mab in her bottle. At last he placed one strangely shaped pebble in the centre, and then began to speak in a low, trembling voice, and in a kind of cadence:
'Oh! you that I have tried to see,
Oh! you that I have heard in the night,
Oh! you that live in the sky and the water;
Now I see you, now you have come:
Now you will tell me where you live,
And what things are, and who made them.
Oh Dala, these stones are yours;
These are the goona stones I find,
And play with when I think of you.
Oh Dala, be my friend, and never leave me
Alone in the dark night.'
'As I live, it's a religious service, the worship of a green butterfly!' said the professor. At his voice the child turned round, and seeing the men, looked very much ashamed of himself.
'Come here, my dear old man.' said the professor to the child, who came on being called.
'What were you doing?—who taught you to say all those funny things?'
The little fellow looked frightened.
'I didn't remember you were here.' he said; 'they are things I say when I play by myself.'
'And who is Dala?'