Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/229

Rh The moon told me no more; her visit to-night was far too short, but I thought of the old woman in the narrow mean street. One word from her, and she might have a palace on the banks of the Thames; one word, and she would have had a villa on the Bay of Naples. "Were I to leave this humble house where the fortunes of my sons originated, their fortune might forsake them." It is a superstition, but a superstition of such a kind that if one knows the story and sees the picture it only needs two words to understand it, "A Mother."

TWENTY-SIXTH EVENING

"Yesterday at daybreak," these were the moon's own words, "not a chimney was yet smoking in the great town, and it was these very chimneys I was looking at, when suddenly a little head popped out at the top of one of them followed by the upper part of a body, with the arms resting on the edge of the chimney. 'Hurrah!' It was a little chimney-sweep who had gone right up a chimney for the first time in his life, and got his head out at the top. 'Hurrah!' this was a very different matter from creeping about in the narrow flues and smaller chimneys. A fresh breeze met his face, and he could see right out over the town away to the green woods beyond. The sun was just rising, big and round, and it shone straight into his face, which beamed with delight, although it was thoroughly smudged with soot. 'Now the whole town can see me,' said he, 'and the moon can see me, and the sun, too, hurrah!' and he waved his brush above his head."

TWENTY-SEVENTH EVENING

"Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the moon; "my beams illumined the long blank walls which border the streets. Here and there you certainly find a door, but it is always tightly shut, for what does the Chinaman