h,
But they never take cold;
For the golden flowers,
And the golden sun,
And the golden smiles
Upon everyone--
Keep the world warm and bright
And flooded with light
For the Bush Babies
In their cradles of gold._

The Bush Babies come out of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest
little things--fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden
peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they
wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and
there, like stray feathers that have stuck to them.

[Illustration: "They haven't a stitch, But they never take cold."]

The Piccaninnies love to play with them; indeed, they're favourites with
everyone, and it's the prettiest sight in the world at early morning, to
see each Bush Baby crawling out of its cradle flower on its little
tummy, yawning or smiling or stretching, or blinking at the light with
round sleepy eyes.

But you would never get up early enough to see that.

They tell a story in the Bush about a Bush Baby and a Piccaninny--and
laugh about it to this day. The Piccaninny told the Bush Baby that he
would find some honey for her. Now the Bush Babies love honey better
than anything else in the world, so she put her hand in his sweetly and
off they set.

They came to the edge of the swamp where the tall branching flax flowers
grow (the flax is not in flower when the kowhai is, but I can't spoil my
story for that), and every flax flower was alive with birds, dipping,
and sipping the honey, so the two little creatures wandered off again.

The Piccaninny led the Bush Baby to several other flowers, but at every
one some bird or insect would edge them away, crying out:

"We got here first!"

[Illustration: "The Bush Lawyer, the most spiteful plant in the bush."]

At last the Bush Baby began to cry. They are very young and tender
things, these Babies, and this one had been caught and scratched by the
Bush Lawyer, the most spiteful plant in the Bush, and had nearly fallen
into a creek, and the peak of its cap was dangling into its eye, and it
was a long way from home.

To comfort it the Piccaninny put his little brown arms right round it
and loved it, and they both sat down on a fallen tree to rest while he
wiped its eyes with a soft green leaf--they didn't know about pocket
handkerchiefs yet.

_Oh!_ The next moment out of a hole in the tree flew a swarm of angry
bees, with humming wings and lar