that stood close by. And she pushed open the door and entered, and found a farmer and a farmer's wife sitting over their supper.
And the farmer's wife took the little Wild Thing with the soul of the marshes up to her room, and clothed her and braided her hair, and brought her down again, and gave her the first food that she had ever eaten. Then the farmer's wife asked many questions.
"Where have you come from?" she said.
"Over the marshes."
"From what direction?" said the farmer's wife.
"South," said the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
"But none can come over the marshes from the south" said the farmer's wife.
"No, they can't do that," said the farmer.
"I lived in the marshes."
"Who are you?" asked the farmer's wife.
"I am a Wild Thing, and have found a soul in the marshes, and we are kin to the Elf- folk."
Talking it over afterwards, the farmer and his wife agreed that she must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer with hunger and exposure.
So that night the little Wild Thing slept in the farmer's house, but her new soul stayed awake the whole night long dreaming of the beauty of the marshes.
As soon as dawn came over the waste and shone on the farmer's house, she looked from the window towards the glittering waters, and saw the inner beauty of the marsh. For the Wild Things only love the marsh and know its haunts, but now she perceived the mystery of its distances and the glamour of its perilous pools, with their fair and deadly mosses, and felt the marvel of the North Wind who comes dominant out of unknown icy lands, and the wonder of that ebb and flow of life when the wildfowl whirl in at evening to the marshlands and at dawn pass out to sea. And she knew that over her head above the farmer's house
