If people only knew a little more, how much better they would get on! at every step the children might have found out where Downy was, if they had only taken the trouble to listen. The old Drake quacked to them in his loudest tones: "down by the brook! down by the brook! stupid creatures! down by the brook!" the fir-trees on the lawn pointed their long green fingers towards the brook. The birds sang, the dogs barked, the leaves whispered, the hens cackled, and each and all said the same thing, over and over again! "Down by the brook! down by the brook!" and so the whole family looked on the beach, and in the orchard, and up and down the road, and all over the barn and the stable, and in the pig-sty. If you will believe me, it was not till after a two-hour's hunt that they found the little fellow, curled up in the long grass by the side of the brook, fast asleep.
You may imagine how Aunt Grace caught him up, and kissed and petted and scolded him all in a breath. But Downy struggled to get down, and cried out "Don't take my foot off! don't take my foot off! naughty Auntie! a-a-a-ah! a-a-ah!"
"What is it, dear?" said his aunt. "Wake up, Downy dear! you have been asleep, and we all thought you were lost, and were dreadfully frightened about you. What is the matter with your foot, my precious?"
Downy rubbed his eyes and looked about him, seeming very much puzzled.
"Why, where'v ve ladder?" he asked. "And where'v my dolden puddin? I didn't want to tome down from de fun! a-a-a-ah! I want to be de King of Fiam, and wide on a white elephant!"
Well, they all told him he had been asleep and dreaming; and they petted and consoled him, and took him into the house, and Aunt Grace gave him an apple almost as big as his own head. But all day long Downy was very melancholy. He smarted under a sense of injury, and could not forgive his aunt for taking his foot off the ladder; and it was many a day before he forgot the golden pudding and the white elephant.
THE four mice had been settled at Glenwood for more than two weeks before I was able to pay them one of my evening visits. Little Puff had been very ill indeed, and all my spare time had been devoted to her. Besides this, there was a revolution in Meteoria (the place where the meteors come from, my dears), and numbers of the inhabitants had emigrated, and had been whizzing past my palace constantly, requiring my utmost care to prevent it from catching fire.