THE Moon said, “Beside the woodland path there are two small farm-houses. The doors are low, and some of the windows are placed quite high, and others close to the ground; and whitethorn and barberry bushes grow around them. The roof of each house is overgrown with moss¹ and with yellow flowers and houseleek. Cabbage and potatoes are the only plants cultivated in the gardens, but out of the hedge there grows a willow² tree, and under this willow tree sat a little girl, and she sat with her eyes fixed³ upon the old oak tree between the two huts.

“It was an old withered⁴ stem. It had been sawn off at the top, and a stork⁵ had built his nest upon it; and he stood in this nest clapping with his beak⁶. A little boy came and stood by the girl’s side: they were brother and sister.

“‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.

“‘I’m watching the stork,’ she replied: ‘our neighbors told me that he would bring us a little brother or sister to-day; let us watch to see it come!’

“‘The stork brings no such things,’ the boy declared, ‘you may be sure of that. Our neighbor told me the same thing, but she laughed when she said it, and so I asked her if she could say ‘On my honor,’ and she could not; and I know by that the story about the storks⁷ is not true, and that they only tell it to us children for fun.’

“‘But where do babies come from, then?’ asked the girl.

“‘Why, an angel from heaven brings them under his cloak, but no man can see him; and that’s why we never know when he brings them.’

“At that moment there was a rustling⁸ in the branches of the willow tree, and the children folded their hands and looked at one another: it was certainly the angel coming with the baby. They took each other’s hand, and at that moment the door of one of the houses opened, and the neighbour appeared.

“‘Come in, you two,’ she said. ‘See what the stork has brought. It is a little brother.’

“And the children nodded gravely at one another, for they had felt quite sure already that the baby was come.”