ould say
nothing else. So the white grouse said: "One moment. I am only too
grateful for this opportunity of showing my sense of your manly conduct
about the firework!"

And the next moment there was a soft whispering rustle of wings
overhead, and then, fluttering slowly, softly down, came hundreds and
thousands of little white fluffy feathers. They fell on George and Jane
like snowflakes, and, like flakes of fallen snow lying one above
another, they grew into a thicker and thicker covering, so that
presently the children were buried under a heap of white feathers, and
only their faces peeped out.

"Oh, you dear, good, kind white grouse," said Jane, "but you'll be cold
yourself, won't you, now you have given us all your pretty dear
feathers?"

The white grouse laughed, and his laugh was echoed by thousands of kind,
soft bird voices.

"Did you think all those feathers came out of one breast? There are
hundreds and hundreds of us here, and every one of us can spare a little
tuft of soft breast feathers to help to keep two kind little hearts
warm!"

Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.

So now the children snuggled under the feathers and were warm, and when
the sealskin dwarfs tried to take the feathers away, the grouse and his
friends flew in their faces with flappings and screams, and drove the
dwarfs back. They are a cowardly folk.

The dragon had not moved yet--but then he might at any moment get warm
enough to move, and though George and Jane were now warm they were not
comfortable nor easy in their minds. They tried to explain to the
grouse; but though he is polite, he is not clever, and he only said:
"You've got a warm nest, and we'll see that no one takes it from you.
What more can you possibly want?"

Just then came a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer
than the grouse's, and George and Jane cried out together: "Oh, _do_
mind your wings in the fires!"

For they saw at once that it was the great white Arctic moth.

"What's the matter?" he asked, settling on the dragon's tail.

So they told him.

"Sealskin, are they?" said the moth. "Just you wait a minute!"

He flew off very crookedly, dodging the flames, and presently he came
back, and there were so many moths with him that it was as if a live
sheet of white wingedness were suddenly drawn between the children and
the stars.

And then the doom of the bad sealskin dwarfs fell suddenly on them.

For the gre