Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/43

26 millet and fish with chop-sticks out of lacquer bowls.

When they went to bed, they put on little gowns of blue cotton, and lay down on soft quilts on the floor, with their small, sleek, black heads on wooden pillows. It sounds uncomfortable to us, but they liked it.

The village where they lived was in a very pretty part of the country. In the spring the hill-sides were covered with a mass of wild fruit blossom, and the path that went down into the valley and up again to the castle of the Dragon was white with fallen petals when the wind blew.

Now the castle of the Dragon was a place that the village children regarded with great curiosity and fear. It was an old half-ruined fort, uninhabited, and popularly believed to be the haunt of a Dragon of a terribly fierce disposition, with ten claws on each foot, (taloned), and teeth