of
herself as an ogre--whiskers sprouted all over her face, her ears
bulged and swaggled, her voice became a cavernous rumble, her
conversation sounded like fee-faw-fum--and yet, her brothers were not
afraid of her in the least; they pinched her and kicked her hat.

He spoke (but always without prejudice) of the loveliest things
imaginable--matters about which brothers had no conception, and for
which they would not have any reverence. He said one day that the sky
was blue, and, on looking she found that it was so. The sky was
amazingly blue. It had never struck her before, but there was a colour
in the firmament before which one might fall down and worship.
Sunlight was not the hot glare which it had been: it was rich,
generous, it was inexpressibly beautiful. The colour and scent of
flowers became more varied. The world emerged as from shrouds and
cerements. It was tender and radiant, comeliness lived everywhere, and
goodwill. Laughter! the very ground bubbled with it: the grasses waved
their hands, the trees danced and curtsied to one another with gentle
dignity, and the wind lurched down the path with its hat on the side of
its head and its hands in its pockets, whistling like her younger
brother.

And then he went away. She did not see him any more. He was not by
the waterfall on the Dodder, nor hanging over the bear-pit in the Zoo.
He was not in the Chapel, nor on the pavement when she came out of a
shop. He was not anywhere. She searched, but he was not anywhere.
And the sun became the hot pest it had always been: the heavens were
stuffed with dirty clouds the way a second-hand shop is stuffed with
dirty bundles: the trees were hulking corner-boys with muddy boots: the
wind blew dust into her eye, and her brothers pulled her hair and
kicked her hat; so that she went apart from all these. She sat before
the mirror regarding herself with woeful amazement--

"He was afraid of me!" she said.

And she wept into his monstrous handkerchief.

II

When he came into the world he came howling, and he howled without
ceasing for seven long years, except at the times when he happened to
be partaking of nourishment, or was fast asleep, and, even then, he
snored with a note of defiance and protest which proved that his humour
was not for peace.

The time came when he ceased to howl and became fascinated by the
problem of how to make other people howl. In this art he became an
adept. When he and another child chanced