Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/240

 top of the Wishing-Gate, and came home because he could not find it."

"What? what's that?" cried Blunder; but just then he found himself at home. There sat his godmother by the fire, her mouse-skin cloak hung up on a peg, and toeing off a spider's silk stocking an eighth of an inch long; and though everybody cried, "What luck?" and, "Where is the Wishing-Gate?" she sat mum.

"I don't know where it is," answered Blunder. "I couldn't find it;" and thereon told the story of his troubles.

"Poor boy!" said his mother, kissing him, while his sister ran to bring him some bread and milk.

"Yes, that is all very fine," cried his godmother, pulling out her needles, and rolling up her ball of silk; "but now hear my story. There was once a little boy who must needs go to the Wishing-Gate, and his godmother showed him the road as far as the turn, and told him to ask the first owl he met what to do then; but this little boy seldom used his eyes, so he passed the first owl, and waked up the wrong owl; so he passed the water-sprite, and found only a frog; so he sat down under the pine-*tree, and never saw the crow; so he passed the Dream-man, and ran after Jack-o'-Lantern; so he tumbled into the goblin's chimney, and couldn't find the shoes and the closet and the chest and the