the house, up and down the stairs, and through the garden in many
directions, until he was satisfied he must have thoroughly bewildered
her as to whereabouts they were, and then at last sped with her up the
stair to the fork of the elm-tree. There he threw back the shawl, and
told her to look.

To see her first utterly bewildered expression--then the slow glimmering
dawn of intelligence, as she began to understand where she was--next the
gradual rise of light in her face as if it came there from some spring
down below, until it broke out in a smile all over it, when at length
she perceived that this was what he had been working at, and why he
wouldn't have her with him--gave Willie all the pleasure he had hoped
for--quite satisfied him, and made him count his labour well rewarded.

"O Willie! Willie! it was all for me!--Wasn't it now?"

"Yes, it was, pet," said Willie.

"It was all to make a bird of me--wasn't it?" she went on.

"Yes--as much of a bird as I could. I couldn't give you wings, you know,
and I hadn't any of my own to fly up with you to the moon, as the angel
in your dream did. The dream was much nicer--wasn't it?"

"I'm not sure about that--really I'm not. I think it is nicer to have a
wind coming you don't know from where, and making all the leaves flutter
about, than to have the wings of birdies making the wind. And I don't
care about the man in the moon much. He's not so nice as you, Willie.
And yon red ray of the sun through there on the fir-tree is as good
nearly as the moon."

"Oh! but you may have the moon, if you wait a bit. She'll be too late
to-night, though."

"But now I think of it, Willie," said Agnes, "I do believe it wasn't a
dream at all."

"Do you think a real angel carried you really up to the moon, then?"
asked Willie.

"No; but a real Willie carried me really up into this tree, and the
moon shone through the leaves, and I thought they were birds. You're my
angel, Willie, only better to me than twenty hundred angels."

And Agnes threw her arms round his neck and hugged and kissed him.

As soon as he could speak, that is, as soon as she ceased choking him,
he said--

"You _were_ up in this tree last night: and the wind was fluttering the
leaves; and the moon was shining through them"--

"And you carried me in this shawl, and that was the red wings of the
angel," cried Agnes, dancing with delight.

"Yes, pet, I daresay it was. But aren't you sorry to lose your big
angel?"