sweet time visiting my relations."

The four uncles said to her, "Will you let us ask you two questions,
first the first question and second the second question?"

[Illustration: Then the uncles asked her the first question first]

"I will let you ask me fifty questions this morning, fifty questions
to-morrow morning, and fifty questions any morning. I like to listen
to questions. They slip in one ear and slip out of the other."

Then the uncles asked her the first question first, "Where do you come
from?" and the second question second, "Why do you have two freckles
on your chin?"

"Answering your first question first," said Wing Tip the Spick, "I
come from the Village of Cream Puffs, a little light village on the
upland corn prairie. From a long ways off it looks like a little hat
you could wear on the end of your thumb to keep the rain off your
thumb."

"Tell us more," said one uncle. "Tell us much," said another uncle.
"Tell it without stopping," added another uncle. "Interruptions nix
nix," murmured the last of the uncles.

"It is a light little village on the upland corn prairie many miles
past the sunset in the west," went on Wing Tip the Spick. "It is light
the same as a cream puff is light. It sits all by itself on the big
long prairie where the prairie goes up in a slope. There on the slope
the winds play around the village. They sing it wind songs, summer
wind songs in summer, winter wind songs in winter."

"And sometimes like an accident, the wind gets rough. And when the
wind gets rough it picks up the little Village of Cream Puffs and
blows it away off in the sky--all by itself."

"O-o-h-h," said one uncle. "Um-m-m-m," said the other three uncles.

"Now the people in the village all understand the winds with their
wind songs in summer and winter. And they understand the rough wind
who comes sometimes and picks up the village and blows it away off
high in the sky all by itself.

"If you go to the public square in the middle of the village you will
see a big roundhouse. If you take the top off the roundhouse you will
see a big spool with a long string winding up around the spool.

"Now whenever the rough wind comes and picks up the village and blows
it away off high in the sky all by itself then the string winds loose
of the spool, because the village is fastened to the string. So the
rough wind blows and blows and the string on the spool winds looser
and looser the farther the village goes bl