alf mother enough.

She came at length, sat down beside me, and after a few moments of
silent delight, expressed mainly by stroking my face and hands, began to
tell me everything that had befallen since I went. The moon appeared as
we talked, and now and then, through the leaves, lighted for a quivering
moment her beautiful face--full of thought, and a care whose love
redeemed and glorified it. How such a child should have been born of
such a mother--such a woman of such a princess, was hard to understand;
but then, happily, she had two parents--say rather, three! She drew my
heart by what in me was likest herself, and I loved her as one who, grow
to what perfection she might, could only become the more a child. I knew
now that I loved her when I left her, and that the hope of seeing
her again had been my main comfort. Every word she spoke seemed to go
straight to my heart, and, like the truth itself, make it purer.

She told me that after I left the orchard valley, the giants began to
believe a little more in the actual existence of their neighbours, and
became in consequence more hostile to them. Sometimes the Little
Ones would see them trampling furiously, perceiving or imagining some
indication of their presence, while they indeed stood beside, and
laughed at their foolish rage. By and by, however, their animosity
assumed a more practical shape: they began to destroy the trees on
whose fruit the Little Ones lived. This drove the mother of them all to
meditate counteraction. Setting the sharpest of them to listen at
night, she learned that the giants thought I was hidden somewhere near,
intending, as soon as I recovered my strength, to come in the dark and
kill them sleeping. Thereupon she concluded that the only way to stop
the destruction was to give them ground for believing that they had
abandoned the place. The Little Ones must remove into the forest--beyond
the range of the giants, but within reach of their own trees, which they
must visit by night! The main objection to the plan was, that the forest
had little or no undergrowth to shelter--or conceal them if necessary.

But she reflected that where birds, there the Little Ones could find
habitation. They had eager sympathies with all modes of life, and could
learn of the wildest creatures: why should they not take refuge from the
cold and their enemies in the tree-tops? why not, having lain in the
low brushwood, seek now the lofty foliage? why not build nests