ar--ef we ever is ter git dar--it'll be dark
good. Den what yo' ma gwine to say? She gwine ter talk wid de flat er
her han'--dat what she gwine ter talk wid. Come on!"

"Can't you be quiet?" cried Buster John. "It's nothing but a song."

"Oh, you kin stay, an' I'll stay wid you," said Drusilla; "but when
Mistiss git you in de wash-room, don't you come sayin' dat I wouldn't
fetch you home."

"I want to see everything," said Buster John.

"I done seed much ez I want ter see," replied Drusilla, "an' now I
want ter live ter tell it."

Before Buster John could say anything more, everything suddenly grew a
little darker, and in the middle of the sky--or what ought to have
been the sky, but which was the enlarged bottom of the spring--there
was a huge shadow. The children looked at it in silence.

VII.

THE LADDER OF LIONS.

The shadow that seemed to fall over everything caused Buster John and
Sweetest Susan and Drusilla to run to the door. It was not a very dark
shadow, but it was dark enough to attract their attention and excite
their alarm. They were not yet used to their surroundings, for,
although a great many things they saw and heard were familiar to them,
they could not forget that they had come through the water in the
spring. They could not forget that Mr. Thimblefinger was the smallest
grown person they had ever seen,--even if he were a grown person,--nor
could they forget that they had never seen a rabbit so wonderfully
large as Mr. Rabbit. Drusilla expressed the feelings of all when she
remarked that she felt "skittish." They were ready to take alarm at
anything that might happen. Therefore they ran to the door to see what
the shadow meant. Finally they looked up at the sky, or what seemed to
be the sky, and there they saw, covering a large part of it, the
vague outline of a huge jug. The shadow wobbled about and wavered, and
ripples of light and shadow played about it and ran down to the
horizon on all sides.

An astronomer, seeing these fantastic wobblings and waverings of light
and shadow in our firmament, would straightway send a letter or a
cable dispatch to the newspapers, declaring that an unheard-of
convulsion was shaking the depths of celestial space. And, indeed, it
was all very puzzling, even to the children, but Drusilla, who had
less imagination than any of the rest, accounted for it all by one
bold stroke of common sense.

"Shuh! 'T ain't nothin' 't all!" she exclaimed. "Dey done