with flapping sails, then two wings beating the same
measured time, then two moving lines still to the old tune, then a
stroke, a fancy, and then--the green sky and the pale moon, but the Old
Owl was gone.

"Did she never come back?" asked Tiny in subdued tones, for the Doctor
had paused again.

"No," said he; "at least not to the shed by the mere. Tommy saw many
owls after this in the course of his life; but as none of them would
speak, and as most of them were addicted to the unconventional customs
of staring and winking, he could not distinguish his friend, if she
were among them. And now I think that is all."

"Is that the very very end?" asked Tiny.

"The very very end," said the Doctor.

"I suppose there might be more and more ends," speculated
Deordie--"about whether the Brownies had any children when they grew
into farmers, and whether the children were Brownies, and whether
_they_ had other Brownies, and so on and on." And Deordie rocked
himself among the geraniums, in the luxurious imagining of an endless
fairy tale.

"You insatiable rascal!" said the Doctor. "Not another word. Jump up,
for I am going to see you home. I have to be off early to-morrow."

"Where?" said Deordie.

"Never mind. I shall be away all day, and I want to be at home in good
time in the evening, for I mean to attack that crop of groundsel
between the sweet-pea hedges. You know, no Brownies come to my
homestead!"

And the Doctor's mouth twitched a little till he fixed it into a stiff
smile.

The children tried hard to extract some more ends out of him on the way
to the Rectory; but he declined to pursue the history of the Trout
family through indefinite generations. It was decided on all hands,
however, that Tommy Trout was evidently one and the same with the Tommy
Trout who pulled the cat out of the well, because "it was just a sort
of thing for a Brownie to do, you know!" and that Johnnie Green (who,
of course, was not Johnnie Trout) was some unworthy village
acquaintance, and "a thorough Boggart."

"Doctor!" said Tiny, as they stood by the garden-gate, "how long do you
think gentlemen's pocket-handkerchiefs take to wear out?"

"That, my dear Madam," said the Doctor, "must depend, like other
terrestrial matters, upon circumstances; whether the gentleman bought
fine cambric, or coarse cotton with pink portraits of the reigning
Sovereign, to commence with; whether he catches many colds, has his
pockets picked, takes snuff