More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme | Page 4

as if exhausted, but each time, as though a puff of wind had caught her up, she rose again fluttering and swiftly turning through the air. The dawn birds twittered and piped soft music for her, and the sea murmured a humming, rushing melody, and still she danced on. As she danced, there arose in the sky above--slow, bright and clear--the Morning Star. Yama saw her twinkling feet pass him as she drew nearer and nearer to the sea; and as the first pink light began to show behind the pine trees she reached the surf. Flinging her arms high above her head, she plunged in, with her snowy mantle billowing round her. Long, long Yama gazed after her, but she had disappeared utterly.
Slowly he turned from the sea. Slowly, very slowly he walked along the shore towards his cottage. Surely he must have been dreaming! But lo! close upon the shore were lying little white flakes that must have been shed from her snowy mantle as she swirled through the air.
Yama stooped to pick them up, but even as he touched them they changed to tear-drops in his hands.
As I have said before, my great-grandfather's nest was close to Yama's cottage, and in the winter evenings Yama would tell my great-grandfather over and over again how Tsuki, the Moon Maiden, had once danced for him.
He never saw her again; but she kept her promise, and every year, on a winter night, she came with her sisters and left a pile of cloaks on the top of Fuji. Every year Yama climbed Fuji to fetch them, but, alas, they always turned to tear-drops at his touch.
Sometimes, too, pieces of her mantle fell to the ground when she was dancing with her sisters to the Morning Star, but they hardly ever fell on the seashore where Yama lived.
Yama never forgot her. Years, long years afterwards, when he was an old, old man he started to climb Fuji as usual. Another bird told my father, however, that that year he never reached the top; but that Tsuki, touched with his devotion to her, had come with her maidens one night as he slept on the mountain side, and, wrapping him in their feathery mantles, had carried him, smiling in his sleep, to their home in the moon.
* * * * * *
"That's the story," concluded the Japanese bird in his sad foreign voice, "and that is why we always think of Tsuki, the Moon Maiden, in snow-time."
"Hoots!" said the Owl grumpily. "It's melancholy enough, but I should have preferred more blood and thunder."
"Anyway, it has passed the time," said the Robin cheerily. "It has left off snowing. I'm off to the house for crumbs. Many thanks for your story. I'll tell you one one of these days that will simply make you die of laughing."
So the Robin flew off, followed by the twittering Sparrow. The Owl settled herself to sleep again, and the Japanese birds were left shivering in the corner to think of their own country.

MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY
"Such as the gardener is--so is the garden"
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle shells, And silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.
There was once upon a time a King who ruled over a vast kingdom. In the kingdom were all sorts of houses, large and small, and the King himself lived in a huge palace the like of which had never been seen for grandeur. Yet, throughout the length and breadth of his kingdom there was not one single garden. Even the palace itself only possessed a back-yard.
This grieved the King very sorely. He sent proclamations over land and sky and sea to men from other countries to come and make him a garden. He offered vast rewards. But, though gardeners had come from far and near, though the King himself had watched them from the palace steps, and had, once even, cut the first sod with a silver spade . . . yet, it was all no use. The garden wouldn't be made and the flowers wouldn't grow. Every kind of patent soil, seeds, hose, watering-cans, weed-killers and mowing machines had been tried in vain. There were stacks of them lying in the palace yard, but never a single flower, never even the beginnings of a garden.
One day the King, quite weary of looking through catalogues and interviewing possible gardeners, had fallen asleep in the little shed in the back-yard which was known as "The Arbour." As he slept he had a dream.
He dreamt that a little wizened old man came to him and said, "Catalogues and gardeners will not help you. You will never have a garden until you get the Princess Mary Radiant to come and shine on your back-yard. Only two men