Page:On the Hill-top (1919).pdf/22

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right while they were looking, he would begin to get bigger and bigger and they would have to drop everything and run for their lives,—and even then they didn't always escape him. And that was what I was trying to understand. I knew that it was only a story and wasn't true, but it sounded as if it meant something, and I was just going to ask the girl about it when I wakened up."

"Well, have you thought it out yet?" asked the Dream.

"Let me see," said Marjorie. "I think the little dog might be like a true little thought that comes to us sometimes and doesn't seem so very important just then; but we give it a pleasant look and make it welcome and keep it along with us; and then by and by, when we stop somewhere and look back over the way that we came, we suddenly see how big and helpful it really was, and how it had protected us from some evil thought or some danger that we hadn't noticed. Don't you think that perhaps that was what it meant?"

The Dream nodded his head. "Whether it is or not, it is a pretty good thought to whistle to."

Marjorie laughed. "But let me see how it works out when you are not nice to the thought. If you scold it and send it away or refuse to look at it because you are afraid that it will get some of your meat—keep you from having some of the good times that you want to have—then it gets big right away, if your conscience is in good working order, and you have to drop everything