Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/14

 the first place. They come from away up behind the stars, where the Spring comes from. And up there, sits One (I can't remember much about her, only that she made me think of a dewdrop—not such a dewdrop as you and I can see, but a dewdrop if it were as large as the whole world) and all the children are in her lap. And each one has a little harness made of ribbon. And there are faun babies, and fairy babies, and human babies. The faun's harness is purple like grapes, and the fairies' is silver like bubbles in moonlight, and the human babies' is just pink and blue; and that's how the stork knows which is which. Now, the storks fly up there (it's wonderful, the distance storks can fly) and each one takes a baby in his beak by the loop at the top of the harness. And down he starts, and all the way down the baby practices kicking. But before they start, the One who is like a dewdrop would be if it were as large as the whole world, gives to each baby a dandelion. And she says "When you reach the lowest circle of stars this dandelion will have gone to seed. Then you must blow on it and see what time you will be born." So when they come to the lowest circle of stars, ''puff! puff!'' blow all the babies on the dandelions which have gone to seed, to see when they will be born. But the down of the dandelion sometimes gets into the storks eyes, and as they haven't any memory to speak of, they make sad mistakes in the places they leave the babies. Sometimes fairies are left with human beings, and some times even fauns—though of that I am not quite sure.

There was a bed with four posts and a boy named Robin slept in it. Long ago he grew too big to sleep in that bed. And since the new bed he slept in had no posts, he thought there were no saints. But some kind of saints every one must have, of course. And one day he saw a glass bowl with four goldfish and he took it home and put it by his new bed, and he called the goldfish Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But he did not think that he was calling them after the saints, only after the four posts he was used to in his old bed. One Spring day this grown up boy's four goldfish died. Many years afterward, as I sat and painted the picture of the angel who came to take little Karen to heaven—the angel who touched the air with a green branch and filled it everywhere with stars—this Robin said to me: "Oh, little Karen's bed is like my old one with the four posts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Have your angel put a gold halo around each post in memory of my four fish."