o keep him from pulling apart, and together they carried
him to the door and dropped him outside, where he made a
delicious-looking brown puddle on the silver snow.

"You stay and watch him till he hardens," called Pirlaps, hurrying
back toward the kitchen, "and don't let him go to sleep again. As soon
as he's hard enough, send him straight in here to me."

Sara stood on the doorstep watching Yassuh, who was now awake and
grinning, and she was very much interested to see how, as he hardened,
he wriggled himself back into shape, like a chrysalis that has just
shed its caterpillar skin. She was sure this was no new experience to
Yassuh.

Presently she thought he was hard enough to be taken back into the
kitchen; and there they found Pirlaps, sitting with flushed face upon
his own fast-melting step, taking little muffin-pans full of
fresh-baked crumbs out of the oven. One panful, alas, was burnt to a
crisp, and some of the others were a shade too brown; but oh, they did
smell and look so very delightful! Considered as muffins (and they
looked so like them that Sara could not help being reminded of them)
they were certainly the tiniest things imaginable; considered as
crumbs (and that was what she had heard Pirlaps call them) they were
considerably above the average in size. For all that, what
discouragingly small crumbs for such appallingly large birds! No
wonder Pirlaps was so worried, and looked so unnaturally hurried and
strenuous!

"Here, Yassuh!" he called, without stopping to scold him. "You empty
these into the baskets and take them right out to the table; and then
you hurry right back and get another batch into the oven as quick as
you can. Roll!"

Yassuh, apparently quite refreshed by his nap, went tumbling out with
the fragrant baskets, and Sara hurried after Pirlaps in his anxious
search for Avrillia. At last they thought of the balcony; and as they
ran up the stairs, there, indeed, they saw Avrillia, with her white
arm outstretched above the balustrade, watching a curled rose-leaf as
it floated down, down, down.

"Avrillia!" called Pirlaps. "Where is the suet?"

Avrillia was leaning far out over the balcony, gazing down into
Nothing. She straightened up and turned around, looking at them with
eyes that hardly saw them.

"It didn't stick," she murmured.

"Avrillia! the suet!" cried Pirlaps, laying his hand on her arm and
shaking it ever so little. "The suet!"

He was not cross--he couldn't be cross