Featherland Part 7

Fortunately, however, the lantern did not go out, and so he quickly picked it up again and held it down, and there, swimming round and round, and unable to get out, was poor Blacknose, the hedgehog, getting fainter and fainter, and nearly drowned, and crying out for somebody to pull him out.

"Well, only to think of that little thornball making all that noise,"

said the gardener, helping the poor thing out and setting it on the gra.s.s; when it was so grateful that it would have thanked him if it could, but it could not, and so stopped there quite still while Boxer put his cold black nose up to it, and stood wagging his thick stumpy tail; for he was too generous a dog to meddle with anyone in trouble, even a hedgehog; and piggy, feeling that he was in distress, and an object of sympathy, did not even attempt to curl up, but lay quite still, waiting for his visitors to go.

"Well," said the old man, "I suppose I am not going to hurt ye, for the master won't have anything hurt; so come along, Boxer; and dinna ye be fetchin' a chiel oot o' bed at sic a time o' nicht again, or ye may e'en stop i' the water." And then the old gardener went off to his cottage; and Boxer, after a run back and a scamper round the rescued hedgehog, went to his kennel.

And so things went on at Greenlawn, year after year, and season after season. It may perhaps seem a very wonderful place; but there are a great many little Greenlawns all over England, where little eyes may see the birds do many of the things that have been told in this little story--a story thought of to please two little girls who were very fond of leaning up against somebody's knee in the evenings before the candles were lighted, and asking somebody to tell them a story.

THE END.