to know what is. Though, of course, I know
there are some people who could not be happy unless they had a whale to
sail on, and perhaps not even then. But they are greedy, grasping
people, the kind who would take four helps of pudding, as likely as not,
which neither Tom nor Mary Ann ever did.

[Illustration: THE DELIVERERS OF THEIR COUNTRY]

III. The Deliverers of Their Country

It all began with Effie's getting something in her eye. It hurt very
much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark--only it seemed
to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried--not
real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being
miserable inside your mind--and then she went to her father to have the
thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he
knew how to take things out of eyes--he did it very cleverly with a soft
paintbrush dipped in castor oil.

When he had gotten the thing out, he said: "This is very curious." Effie
had often got things in her eye before, and her father had always seemed
to think it was natural--rather tiresome and naughty perhaps, but still
natural. He had never before thought it curious.

Effie stood holding her handkerchief to her eye, and said: "I don't
believe it's out." People always say this when they have had something
in their eyes.

"Oh, yes--it's out," said the doctor. "Here it is, on the brush. This is
very interesting."

Effie had never heard her father say that about anything that she had
any share in. She said: "What?"

The doctor carried the brush very carefully across the room, and held
the point of it under his microscope--then he twisted the brass screws
of the microscope, and looked through the top with one eye.

"Dear me," he said. "Dear, dear me! Four well-developed limbs; a long
caudal appendage; five toes, unequal in lengths, almost like one of the
_Lacertidae_, yet there are traces of wings." The creature under his eye
wriggled a little in the castor oil, and he went on: "Yes; a batlike
wing. A new specimen, undoubtedly. Effie, run round to the professor and
ask him to be kind enough to step in for a few minutes."

"You might give me sixpence, Daddy," said Effie, "because I did bring
you the new specimen. I took great care of it inside my eye, and my eye
_does_ hurt."

The doctor was so pleased with the new specimen that he gave Effie a
shilling, and presently the professor stepped round. He sta