nd they
in turn repaid her by their wonderful melodies.

Even the mama deer brought their little, wabbly-legged baby deer to
introduce to Sally Migrundy; and she rubbed their sleek sides and talked
to them so they couldn't but love her.

Now Sally Migrundy had always lived in her tiny cottage on the bank of
the tinkling stream which ran through the whispering forest. She had
lived there when the largest trees in the forest were tiny little
sprouts. She had lived there long before that, and even still longer
than that, and that, and that. Ever so much longer!

[Illustration]

One day a man who lived on a hill many, many miles away from the
whispering forest said to his wife: "Mother, wouldn't you like to know
where the water that flows from our spring goes to?" And his wife
replied: "It must travel until it reaches the ocean!"

"Yes, I know that, mother" he replied, "but I mean, wouldn't it be
interesting to know all of the country through which the water flows?"

So the more they talked of it, the more interested they became until the
man finally wrote upon a slip of paper and put the paper into a tiny
bottle. Then he put the bottle upon the surface of the spring water and
watched it float away.

The little bottle floated along, tumbling over the tiny falls and
tinkling ripples and bobbing up and down in the deep, blue, quiet,
places until finally it floated to Sally Migrundy's and came to rest in
the mass of pretty flowers where Sally Migrundy came each morning to dip
her tiny bucket of water.

And so Sally Migrundy found the tiny bottle and took it into her tiny
house to read the tiny note she saw inside.

It was such a nice, happy-hearted note Sally Migrundy said: "I will
answer it!" So she wrote a happy-hearted note and asked whoever read it
to come and visit her. Then she put her note in the tiny bottle and sent
it dancing and bobbing down through the whispering forest, riding upon
the surface of the singing stream. And Sally Migrundy's note floated
along in the bottle until a little boy and a little girl saw it and
picked it up.

And when they read Sally Migrundy's happy-hearted note asking them to
visit her they started following up the stream until after a long, long
time they came to the tiny little cottage.

Sally Migrundy was very much surprised to see the two children, for she
had almost forgotten she had written the invitation.

"Howdeedoo!" said Sally Migrundy, "Where in the world did you ch