By F. C. Younger.
t was midnight: the Witch was sitting on an upturned basket in the hen-house, staring at the Memory-Saver. No one but a witch could have seen at all inside the hen-house, but this particular Witch had gathered pieces of decayed wood on the way there, lit them at glow-worms, and stuck them on the walls. They burnt with a weird, blue light, and showed the old Witch on the basket scratching her bristly chin; the Black Cock in a kind of faint up one corner, with his eyes turned up till they showed the whites; the empty nest; the halves of a broken egg-shell on the floor; and beside them a tiny round black lump with all sorts of queer little tags hanging on to it, which was staring back at the Witch with two frightened little pink eyes.
"It's quite a new idea," said the Witch to herself. "A Memory-Saver! How thankful many people would be to get hold of one! But they don't know the way, and they won't ask me. They don't know how to hatch an imp to save your memory from a cock's egg. They even say that a cock never lays eggs. Such ignorance! Cocks always lay them at midnight and eat them before morning; and that's why no one has ever seen one. But if you are careful to sprinkle the cock with Witch-water three nights running, he will lay an egg he cannot eat; and if you bless the egg with the Witch's curse, and roast it three nights in the Witch's fire, when the moon is on the wane, it will hatch a Memory-Saver. But poor mortals don't know this, and that's why they're always worrying and 'taxing their memories,' as they call it, instead of hiring a nice little imp to save them the trouble. Come here, my dear!" she added, addressing the Memory-Saver.
The little black lump rolled over and over until he reached her feet, then gave a jump and landed on two of the thickest of his tags, which supported him like two little legs. With two others he began to rub his little black self all over, while he shed little green tears from his little pink eyes.
He was a queer little person, very like an egg in shape, with no features but a pair of little pink eyes near the top, and a wide slit which went about half-way round him and served him for a mouth. The Witch regarded him in silence; she knew that inside him was nothing but a number of little rooms, carefully partitioned off from one another, which could be emptied by pulling the tag attached to each outside.
There was no sound in the hen-house but the frightened clucking of the hens, the gasping of the Black Cock in the corner, and the sobbing of the imp, which sounded like the squeaking of a slate-pencil on a slate. Presently the Witch patted the Memory-Saver on the head.
"Don't cry, my dear," she said; "there's nothing to cry about! And don't look at that silly Black Cock in the corner. He isn't your Mother any longer. I'm your Mother now—at least, all the Mother you'll get, and I shall pinch you if you don't work. I'll just see if you are in good working order now."
She lifted the imp in her hand as she spoke, and pulled one of the little tags hanging behind him. The Memory-Saver gave a gasp, and, opening his mouth to its widest extent, he began to repeat, rapidly: "J'ai—tu as—il a—nous avons—vous avez—ils ont."
"Very good!" said the Witch, "the French string is in order. I'll try the poetry."