Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/212

 new suit and a new linen shirt. Brownie put the things on and danced around the room, singing,

"What have we here? Hemten hamten! Here will I nevermore tread nor stampen."

And away he danced through the door and never came back again. Tommy wanted to know why, but his grandmother couldn't tell him. "The Old Owl knows," she said, "I don't. Ask her."

Now Tommy was a lazy boy. He thought that if only he could find a brownie that would do his work he would save himself a great deal of trouble. So that night, while little Johnnie lay sound asleep beside him, in the loft of the kitchen, as rosy and rosier than an apple, he lay broad awake, thinking of his grandmother's story. "There's an owl living in the old shed by the lake," he thought. "It may be the Old Owl herself, and she knows, Granny says. When father's gone to bed and the moon rises, I'll go and ask her."

By and by the moon rose like gold and went up into the heavens like silver, flooding the fields with a pale ghostly light. Tom crept softly down the ladder and stole out. It was a glorious night, though everything but the wind and Tommy seemed asleep. The stones, the walls, the gleaming lanes, were so intensely still, the church tower in the valley seemed awake and watching, but silent; the houses in the village round it had all their eyes shut; and it