d strength, not Rosie with all her
nervous energy, not Billy with all his athletic training.

"Mrs. Delia Flynn, champion of America and Ireland," Billy greeted
the victor. "Granny, we'll have to enter you in the next Olympic
games."

They returned after this breathless work to the living-room.

"Now I'm going to tell you a story," Billy announced.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Maida squealed. "Do! Billy tells the most wonderful
stories, Rosie--stories he's heard and stories he's read. But the
most wonderful ones are those that he makes up as he goes along."

The two little girls settled themselves on the hearth-rug at Billy's
feet. Granny sat, not far off, working with double speed at her
neglected knitting.

"Once upon a time," Billy said, "there lived a little girl named
Klara. And Klara was the naughtiest little girl in the world. She
was a pretty child and a clever child and everybody would have loved
her if she had only given them a chance. But how can you love a
child who is doing naughty things all the time? Particularly was she
a great trial to her mother. That poor lady was not well and needed
care and attention, herself. But instead of giving her these, Klara
gave her only hard words and disobedient acts. The mother used
sometimes to punish her little daughter but it seemed as if this
only made her worse. Both father and mother were in despair about
her. Klara seemed to be growing steadily worse and worse. And,
indeed, lately, she had added to her naughtiness by threatening to
run away.

"One night, it happened, Klara had been so bad that her mother had
put her to bed early. The moment her mother left the room, Klara
whipped over to the window. 'I'm going to dress myself and climb out
the window and run away and never come back, she said to herself.'

"The house in which Klara lived was built on the side of a cliff,
overlooking the sea. As Klara stood there in her nightgown the moon
began to rise and come up out of the water. Now the moonrise is
always a beautiful sight and Klara stopped for a moment to watch it,
fascinated.

"It seemed to her that she had never seen the moon look so big
before. And certainly she had never seen it such a color--a soft deep
orange. In fact, it might have been an immense orange--or better, a
monster pumpkin stuck on the horizon-line.

"The strange thing about the moon, though, was that it grew larger
instead of smaller. It rose higher and higher, growing bigger and
bigger, until