nt, all
this anxiety has made me as empty in myself as a clean saucer."

"Just what I was saying; if you are hungry, you can----"

"Say that again, say it just once more," she said, and her eyes grew
narrow as she said it, "and I shall----"

"What shall you do?" I asked, for she stopped suddenly.

She calmed herself. "Oh, you know how it is when one's been all
excited-like and worked up; we all say more than we mean. But that about
dry bread! Well, there! I simply can't bear it. It's a wicked, cruel
untruth, that's what it is; and besides, you _can't_ be going to eat all
the whole of what she's put down for you." Excitement was coming on
again, and she ended with a loud ill-tempered mew.

Well, I gave her what she seemed to want, and shortly after, worn out
doubtless with the fatigues of the day, she went to sleep on a chair,
not even caring to follow the maid downstairs when things were cleared
away.

VI

THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS

I got out my precious casket. I sat by the window and watched. The moon
shone out, the lid of the box loosened in due course, and I touched my
forehead with the ointment. But neither at once nor for some little time
after did I notice any fresh power coming to me.

With the moon, up came also the little town, and no sooner were the
doors of the houses level with the grass than the boys were out of them
and running in some numbers towards my window; in fact, some slipped out
of their own windows, not waiting for the doors to be available. Wag was
the first. Slim, more sedate, came among the crowd that followed. These
were still the only two who felt no hesitation about talking to me. The
others were all fully occupied in exploring the room.

"To-morrow," I said (after some sort of how-do-you-do's had been
exchanged), "you'll be flying all over the place, I suppose."

"Yes," said Wag, shortly. "But I want to know--I say, Slim, what was it
we wanted first?"

"Wasn't there a message from your father?" said Slim.

"Oh, yes, of course. 'If they're about the house,' he said, 'give them
horseshoes; if there's a bat-ball, squirt at it': he thinks there's a
squirt in the tool-house--Oh, there's the cat; I must----" After
delivering all this in one sentence, he rushed to the edge of the table
and took a kind of header into the midst of the unfortunate animal, who,
however, only moaned or crowed without waking, and turned partly over on
her back.

Slim remained sitting on a