Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/107



Listen to what the Moon said.—Many years ago, in Copenhagen, I peeped in at the window of a poor chamber. The father and mother slept, but the little son slept not. I saw the flowered cotton bed-hangings move, and the child peeped out. I fancied at first that he was looking at the Bornholm timepiece, it was so beautifully painted with red and green, and a cuckoo sate on the top of it; there were heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass surface, went to and fro, “dik, dik!” but it was not that which he was looking at—no, it was his mother’s spinning-wheel, which stood under the clock. That was the most precious piece of furniture in the whole house to the boy, but he did not dare to touch it, for if he did,