Half-Past Seven Stories Part 14

She shook her head.

"That I can't tell you, for you'd never understand it, but it's a very pretty word."

Marmaduke sighed.

"I'd like to know it," he said, "but I suppose I can't."

And the Star Lady answered,--

"Not now, perhaps some day."

"Do you do anything else besides hunting for little lost stars?"

"Oh, yes," she said, coming a trifle nearer his bed, "sometimes we find little stars on earth that have never been in the sky, and they s.h.i.+ne so very brightly that we take them up there, too."

"What kind of stars?"

"Would you like to see them?"

"You bet I would," Marmaduke started to say, then stopped. That sounded rather rude. Still she didn't reprove him; she didn't seem to mind it a bit. There was something very homelike about her, for all she was so radiant and bright.

"I understand perfectly," she a.s.sured him, "but we must be off before daylight." Then she turned to the bureau.

"Take the Little Blue Lamp with you, then you'll seem like a star, too."

Now long ago Marmaduke had made another trip to the skies, to see The Old Man in the Moon, but that journey was never like this. This was so much more beautiful.

He didn't feel as if he were walking or riding, just rising in the air with one hand clasped in the fingers of the Star Lady, the other around the little lamp.

Marmaduke wondered if all the people would look up and see his little light.

"Perhaps they can see just the light and not me," he said to himself, "and that would be just right."

They rose up over the trees, then over the brook, and he saw himself s.h.i.+ning in the brook. It looked as if his twin were lying there in the water, and he laughed out loud--that is he thought he did. But he found he wasn't making any sound. Instead of words, sparkles seemed to come from his mouth, like the twinkles of a star.

He asked the Star Lady about that. It was very funny, but now that they were getting up in the clouds he couldn't hear his own voice and she couldn't hear it, either, but they understood each other just the same.

"When a star twinkles, it is laughing," she explained, and it all seemed very clear to him.

Now they pa.s.sed through great clouds. When they rose above them he looked down. They seemed like white islands in a clear blue sea. And the sky was the sea. It wasn't like water, but just as cool, and the earth, and the towns, and the trees lay like places buried at the bottom of the ocean.

He tried to step on a cloud, and he couldn't feel anything at all under him, yet it didn't give way--he could sit down on it. He did lie down for a little while, it felt so soft and nice, but the Star Lady made him get up.

"We must hurry, for way over there I see the Sun. He's stirring in his sleep, and when he gets up and washes his face--"

"Does he wash his face?" interrupted Marmaduke, "just like real people?"

"Yes, he rubs cloud lather all over it, and then he dips his face in the bowl of the ocean."

"How does he dry it?"

"Oh, the morning wind does that," she replied, smiling at such a parade of questions, "but let's go before he starts to wash up, for I must show you all the star fields. It's only a few steps up."

"But I don't see any steps," exclaimed the little boy.

She smiled.

"Don't you?" she said, "you've been climbing them all the time."

"But it's such a long way to come, and my legs don't feel a bit tired," he persisted, a little doubtfully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'We must hurry, for way over there I see the Sun. He's stirring in his sleep.'"]

"Oh, no one ever gets tired in the skies," she explained, "we never get tired and we never grow old."

"Do you live forever 'n ever?"

"Yes, forever," she answered gently, "but there are the fields."

Before them and all around them they stretched--as far as his eyes could see, and as far as they could have seen if he had had the biggest telescope in the world.

They were not green like those of Earth, but blue--blue as if each blade of gra.s.s were a blade of violet. And each field was thickly planted with bright little gleams like fireflies, winking, winking through the night.

And here and there was a great big star, like the Star Lady herself, walking about--no, it wasn't that--they were _floating_ about the meadows. How Marmaduke wished he knew the word she had said they used in the skies for "walking."

"Are they stars or angels?" he asked her.

"Yes and no," she replied. Her answer was very strange, but she wouldn't explain it.

Suddenly Marmaduke thought of a question he had often asked people down on Earth. He could put it to the Star Lady and see if she would give the same answer as Mother. It was an old, old question that little children have asked ever since the world began.

"Who made the stars?" it was.

"G.o.d," she answered gently, "at least He made the big ones--but not the little ones."

"And who made them?"

"Oh, the people on earth. Perhaps you made a few yourself," she added.

"_Me_? How ever could I make stars?" And he stared at her in wonder.

"Oh, yes you can. Do you see those little ones there? They are the kind deeds people do on Earth. We go looking for them, and we can find them easily, for they s.h.i.+ne out even in the darkest woods and the darkest streets. Then we put them up here. Look hard and perhaps you can find some you recognize."

Marmaduke did look hard. There was one near him. It was very little, but, somehow, as he looked he seemed to know it.

He went very near it. It twinkled like a real star, yet it was round as a bubble. And in it, just as in a soap bubble, he saw a picture.

The Star Lady was looking at him with an amused smile.