Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/211

 old witch owl looked at them his strings mended themselves.

Dancing down the path and out into the moonlight after the children he sounded his sweetest notes in time to their singing; and the little pig and his mother and the roly-poly pup and his father and the donkey and his master followed and took up the children's song. To the very end of it the fiddle danced and played his merriest. At the turn of the road he looked back at the old witch owl and she was looking at him.

"The little pig's news is good," he cried, "I'm off to spread it far and wide."

And as she sailed off into the night he was sure she nodded at him.

And Piggikin got the nuts after all, though they were a day late.

—

THE OWL'S ANSWER TO TOMMY

One evening Tommy's grandmother had been telling him and his little brother Johnny a story about a brownie who used to do all the work in a neighbor's house before the family got up in the morning. But the maids caught sight of him one night, and they felt so sorry to see his ragged coat that the next night they laid near his bowl of bread and milk a