Lilith

All day I worked hard. When the darkness came, they tied my hands, and left me fast to the tree. I slept a
good deal, but woke often, and every time from a dream of lying in the heart of a heap of children. With the
morning my enemies reappeared, bringing their kicks and their bestial company.
It was about noon, and I was nearly failing from fatigue and hunger, when I heard a sudden commotion in the
brushwood, followed by a burst of the bell−like laughter so dear to my heart. I gave a loud cry of delight and
welcome. Immediately rose a trumpeting as of baby−elephants, a neighing as of foals, and a bellowing as of
calves, and through the bushes came a crowd of Little Ones, on diminutive horses, on small elephants, on
little bears; but the noises came from the riders, not the animals. Mingled with the mounted ones walked the
bigger of the boys and girls, among the latter a woman with a baby crowing in her arms. The giants sprang to
their lumbering feet, but were instantly saluted with a storm of sharp stones; the horses charged their legs; the
bears rose and hugged them at the waist; the elephants threw their trunks round their necks, pulled them
down, and gave them such a trampling as they had sometimes given, but never received before. In a moment
my ropes were undone, and I was in the arms, seemingly innumerable, of the Little Ones. For some time I
saw no more of the giants.
They made me sit down, and my Lona came, and without a word began to feed me with the loveliest red and
yellow fruits. I sat and ate, the whole colony mounting guard until I had done. Then they brought up two of
the largest of their elephants, and having placed them side by side, hooked their trunks and tied their tails
together. The docile creatures could have untied their tails with a single shake, and unhooked their trunks by
forgetting them; but tails and trunks remained as their little masters had arranged them, and it was clear the
elephants understood that they must keep their bodies parallel. I got up, and laid myself in the hollow
between their two backs; when the wise animals, counteracting the weight that pushed them apart, leaned
against each other, and made for me a most comfortable litter. My feet, it is true, projected beyond their tails,
but my head lay pillowed on an ear of each. Then some of the smaller children, mounting for a bodyguard,
ranged themselves in a row along the back of each of my bearers; the whole assembly formed itself in train;
and the procession began to move.
Whither they were carrying me, I did not try to conjecture; I yielded myself to their pleasure, almost as happy
as they. Chattering and laughing and playing glad tricks innumerable at first, the moment they saw I was
going to sleep, they became still as judges.
I woke: a sudden musical uproar greeted the opening of my eyes.
We were travelling through the forest in which they found the babies, and which, as I had suspected,
stretched all the way from the valley to the hot stream.
A tiny girl sat with her little feet close to my face, and looked down at me coaxingly for a while, then spoke,
the rest seeming to hang on her words.
"We make a petisson to king," she said.
"What is it, my darling?" I asked.
"Sut eyes one minute," she answered.
"Certainly I will! Here goes!" I replied, and shut my eyes close.
"No, no! not fore I tell oo!" she cried.
Lilith
I opened them again, and we talked and laughed together for quite another hour.
Lilith 103