Piccaninnies | Page 6

when they told him about it, and said:
"Pooh! I knew that honey was there all the time. I said I'd find her some
and I did!"
How like a boy!
When the tree of gold Turns a tree of green, The dear Bush Babies Are
no more seen. To fields of gold They have gaily run, And are lost in the
light Of the golden sun; Or caught in the mist Of gold that lies Like a
net of dreams On Day's sleepy eyes. But behold! next year They are
here! They are here! They come trooping back Down the wander-track,
Like rays of light In the forest old, And the green tree turns To a tree of
gold.

HOHERIA BLOSSOM.
Do you know the Lovely Ladies of the Bush? They swing on the tips of
the Hoheria tree, with their floating white gowns and tossing silvery
ringlets, and are so light and graceful that they float on the wind as they
swing. If you could only see the Lovely Ladies dancing! But very few
have been lucky enough for that!
They dance on the wind, holding to the tips of the Hoheria and their
white gowns flutter and swirl, and their ringlets float and sway, and
sometimes in the joy of the dance a Lovely Lady lets go of her branch
and comes fluttering down to earth.
Then she can dance no more, but lies very still. It is rather sad, because
once she has let go she may not go back and dance on the tree for a
whole long year, and it is looked on rather as a disgrace to be the first
to fall.
However, she has not to wait long for company. For one by one, the
Lovely Ladies, wild with the joy of the mazy dance, the soft rush of the
wind and the laughing and clapping of the little leaves, loose their hold,

and drift to earth light as thistle-down, and that is the end of their
dancing for that year. Where do they go to while the year goes by? I
have never found out, but I think it most likely that they go to the place
they came from.
The Lovely Ladies have a song which they and the wind sing together
as they dance, and the way it is sung makes everyone that hears it, mad
to dance too. This is it:
"The wind is shaking the Hoheria tree, Cling, Maidens, cling!" "I'll
dance with you if you'll dance with me, Swing, Maidens, swing!" "So up
with a windy rush we go, Floating, fluttering, to and fro," "Sing for the
joy of it, Maidens, Oh! Sing, Maidens, sing!"
The Piccaninnies simply love to watch the Lovely Ladies dancing, and
long to be able to dance in the same way. When they hear the song,
their little brown toes go fidgeting among the moss and leaves, and
their heads nod-nodding to the air.
[Illustration: "They dance on the wind."]
[Illustration: "They began working themselves up and down like mad."]
Once they found a Hoheria tree after all the Lovely Ladies had left it,
and now, they thought, was their chance. They swarmed all over the
tree, clutched the tips of the delicate branches, and began working
themselves up and down like mad.
It was great fun, but with their chubby little brown bodies, short legs,
and shock heads, it did not look quite the same thing, and three Bush
Babies riding that way on a good-natured kiwi, laughed so much (and
even the kiwi, which is a grave bird, looked up and smiled) that the
Piccaninnies, feeling rather foolish, dropped to the the ground and ran
away and hid in the fern.

THE GREAT RED ENEMY.

One day one of those tiresome picnic parties came again to the bush,
and after a great deal of stupid and rather terrifying noise, during which
every Piccaninny and Bush Baby and all the other bush folk lay hidden
away in utter silence, the people all went away again, and the Wee Folk
were free to come out of their hiding places and turn over curiously the
few things the party had left.
There was an empty meat tin which flashed so brightly that the
Piccaninnies took it for a helmet, and each in turn tried to wear it; but it
was so big that it simply hid them altogether, so very regretfully they
had to throw it away. Then there were a few crusts of bread which quite
by accident one of the boys discovered to be good to eat. They finished
every crumb of the bread and enjoyed it, but on the whole agreed that
fern root tasted nicer. There was an empty bottle that nobody dared go
near, for they thought