Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/133

 the twinkling fireflies. They were her favourites, those poor ignorant little insects. She loved them as well as the delicate, gauzy butterflies, the sweeping swallows with their slim white wings, or the great gold-and-black bees. She adored them all, but the tiny blue-black fireflies, with thin gauze wings and the spot of phosphorescence showing now and then, were perhaps the loveliest of all. How she liked to see them playing about at dusk, sparkling and gleaminglittle stars of the trees, in golden waves across the sky.

Sometimes, when they began to come out, she would go forth and dance and skip with myriads of them clustered in her hair. Around each invisible fern and blossom in her dress would gather a row of the little insects, until finally one could have seen her entire form bordered with fireflies. And besides these which alighted on her dress, thousands gathered swarming about her, so that her head was entirely hidden in a maze of gold.

Sometimes she would sleep at night and in the daytime play with the butterflies, birds, and bees. But now she began to sleep more and more in the day and play about at night.

One cool morning Eepersip went down the lovely hill that she and Fleuriss had found. She walked down and then out toward the pastured