The Laughter of Peterkin
At the rising of the moon, Peterkin awoke, and laughed. He was in his little white bed near the open window, so that when a moonbeam wavered from amid the branches of the great poplar, falling suddenly upon his tangled curls and yellowing them with a ripple of pale gold, it was as though a living thing stole in out of the June night.
He had not awaked at first. The moonbeam seemed caught in a tangle: then it glanced along a crescent tress on the pillow: sprang back like a startled bird: flickered hither and thither above the little sleeping face: and at last played idly on the closed eyelids with their long dark eyelashes. It was then that Peterkin awoke.
When he opened his eyes he sat up, and so the moonbeam fell into the two white cups of his tiny hands. He held it, but like a yellow eel it wriggled away, and danced mockingly upon the counterpane.
With a sleepy smile he turned and looked out of the window. How dark it was out there! That white moth which wavered to and fro made the twilight like a shadowy wall. Then upon this wall Peterkin saw a great fantastic shape. It grew and grew, and spread out huge arms and innumerable little hands: and in its shadow-face it had seven shining eyes. Peterkin stared, awe-struck. Then there was a dance of moonshine, a cascade of trickling, rippling yellow, and he saw that the shape in the night was the familiar poplar, and that its arms were the big boughs and branches where the spotted mavis and the black merle sang each morning, and that the innumerable little hands were the ever-tremulous, ever-dancing, round little leaves, and that the seven glittering eyes were only seven stars that had caught among the topmost twigs.
II
Peterkin was very sleepy, but before his head sank back to the pillow he saw something which caused him to hold his breath, and made his eyes grow so round and large that they were like the little pools one sees on the hill-side.
Every here and there he saw tiny yellow and green lives slipping and sliding along and in and out of the branches of the poplar. Sometimes they were all pale yellow, like gold; sometimes of a shimmering green; sometimes so dusky that only by their shining eyes were they visible. At first he could not clearly distinguish these unfamiliar denizens of the great poplar. The vast green pyramid seemed innumerously alive. Then gradually he saw that each delicate shape was like a human being: little men and women, but smaller than the smallest children, smaller even than dolls. They were all laughing and chasing each other to and fro. Some slid swiftly down an outspread branch, and then dropped on to a green leafy billow or plunged into an inscrutable maze: others swung by the little crook at the end of each leaf, and laughed as they were blown this way and that by puffs of air: and a few daring ones climbed to the topmost sprays of the topmost boughs and held up tiny white hands like daisies. These wished to clasp the moonshine. As well might a fish try to catch the moon-dazzle on the water! No wonder Peterkin laughed.
Ever and again a delicate sweet singing came from the moonshine-folk. Peterkin listened, but could hear no words he knew. Perhaps there were no words at all, or mayhap he himself knew too few. But the singing was strangely familiar. Sometimes when mother sang, surely he had heard it: as far back, farther back, than memory could take him, he had heard some echo of it. Cradle-sweet it was, that dim snatch of a fugitive strain. And, too, had he not heard something of it in the wind, when that went whispering through the grass and in and out of the wild-rose thicket, or when it lifted and waved a great wing and fanned the trees into vast swaying flames of green? Yes, even in the fire he had heard it. When the orange and red flames flickered among the coals, or caught the sap in the pine-logs and grew into yellow and blue with hearts of purple, he had heard a faint far-off music.