"You silly boy," said Hoodie, very sharply. "How do you know? You've never been in the stars."
"But you hasn't neither," he persisted.
"Never mind. I know, and if I didn't I couldn't tell you. That's how people can tell stories. Well, the stars come out, lots and lots of them, and go running about all night, and then in the morning the moon sends round to draw all the curtains again and they're all to go to sleep."
"But some nights the moon isn't there and the stars are there without her. How is that, Hoodie?" said Cousin Magdalen, rather mischievously.
"You think so 'cos you don't know; but I do," said Hoodie, nodding her head sagaciously. "The moon's alvays there, only sometimes she has a cold, and then she wraps up her white face in a shawl and you can't see her."
There was a twinkle of fun in Hoodie's green eyes as she said this that showed her cousin that her little teasing was understood.
"Oh, indeed," she said, gravely, "I did not know. Thank you, Hoodie, for explaining to me."
"And so," continued Hoodie, "the goblins never saw anything of day things, but they saw very funny things at night when they went sailing about on the star."
"Stars don't go sailing about," objected Maudie. "They're always quite still."
"They're not then," said Hoodie: "that shows you don't listen, Maudie. I heard Papa say one day that the stars are going as fast as fast, only they go so fast that we can't see them."