Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/81

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ingeverything was! Oh, nothing in a house could compare with the world of light that Eepersip lived in!

Out here, the sunbeams made shadows wherever they struck; the birds twittered; the ripples lapped the shore caressingly. Otherwise all was still. But she was not thinking of the sea: she had decided to explore the woodland, for she felt, in a way, that it was her home. Following a little winding path, she came through a grove of white pines carpeted with needles and dotted with gnome-like toadstools of red and yellow, looking very bright and mysterious in that shady place. They were, to Eepersip, like the traces of some elfin revel, perhaps thrones of precious mineral. There were great boulders, too, covered with grey-green lichens some bearing aloft tiny cup-like blossoms of pearly grey—the cups from which the feasters had drunk their flower-wine. Seeing a lighter place ahead, she knew that she was coming out of the pine grove. A flood of pale green radiance greeted her, as she stepped out of the dimness of the woods into a meadow. White and yellow butterflies were fluttering over it in great flocks, with wings shining. Eepersip could hear birds chirping and singing. She passed on through the meadow and came again into woodlands, so thick now that hardly a