Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/154

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

touched the treetops with magic. Then she would go on again through the moonlit night. Once she came to a place where the brook separated, and she had a difficulty choosing which branch to follow.

And when the russet dawn reappeared, tipping tie mountains with apple-blossom and fire, she had followed it to its goal in the very meadow from where she had started—a pool hitherto unseen by her. About a hundred feet across it was, beached with clean white pebbles. In it bloomed water-lilies, fragrant and white, with centres of gold; strange red flowers, too, she saw on the bottom, growing between the pebbles. Dragonflies with crackling wings swept over it in circles. She saw, too, a shoal of tiny fishes of a brownish colour, striped with yellow. They would suddenly dart forward as if something had frightened them, and then poise themselves stock-still, mimicking so many sticks in the shadows of the abundant lily-pads.

She was wading about in the pool when suddenly—where there had been ground for her foot to rest on, nothing was there. The bottom of the pool under her foot had slid forward and collapsed! Suddenly "Clug-glug, clug-glug, chugarum, glug!" reached her, as a big bull-frog's nose appeared by