only make the young ones long for a sort of
food which they can't get just now."

* * * * *

"Are these the high hills, beneath yonder, of which I have heard?"
asked Helga, in the disguise of a swan.

"These are thunder-clouds driving under us," replied her mother.

"What are these white clouds that seem so stationary?" asked Helga.

"These are the mountains covered with everlasting snow that thou
seest," said her mother; and they flew over the Alps towards the blue
Mediterranean.

* * * * *

"There is Africa! there is Egypt!" cried in joyful accents, under her
swan disguise, the daughter of the Nile, as high up in the air she
descried, like a whitish-yellow, billow-shaped streak, her native
soil.

The storks also saw it, and quickened their flight.

"I smell the mud of the Nile and the wet frogs," exclaimed the
stork-mother. "It makes my mouth water. Yes, now ye shall have nice
things to eat, and ye shall see the marabout, the ibis, and the crane:
they are all related to our family, but are not nearly so handsome as
we are. They think a great deal, however, of themselves, particularly
the ibis: he has been spoiled by the Egyptians, who make a mummy of
him, and stuff him with aromatic herbs. _I_ would rather be stuffed
with living frogs; and that is what ye would all like also, and what
ye shall be. Better a good dinner when one is living than to be made a
grand show of when one is dead. That is what I think, and I know I am
right."

"The storks have returned," was told in the splendid house on the
banks of the Nile, where, within the open hall, upon soft cushions,
covered with a leopard's skin, the king lay, neither living nor dead,
hoping for the lotus flower from the deep morass of the north. His
kindred and his attendants were standing around him.

And into the hall flew two magnificent white swans--they had arrived
with the storks. They cast off the dazzling magic feather garbs, and
there stood two beautiful women, as like each other as two drops of
water. They leaned over the pallid, faded old man; they threw back
their long hair; and, as little Helga bowed over her grandfather, his
cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkled, life returned to his stiffened
limbs. The old man rose hale and hearty; his daughter and his
grand-daughter pressed him in their arms, as if in a glad morning
salutation after a long heavy dream.

* * *