f I could only see you fly!"

"But I don't do it often, you see," answered the Plynck, quietly.

"Why--!" exclaimed Sara. "I thought you just said--" Not for worlds
would she have seemed rude or impolite to the Plynck, but she was
completely puzzled.

The Plynck looked very kind. "I said I make it a rule," she said,
gently. "I didn't say--you explain it to her," she said suddenly to
her Echo in the pool, who had been looking on with rather an amused
expression.

The Echo fluffed out her deep blue plumes a little and took up the
task. "What are rules for, my dear?" she began.

"Why--to keep, I guess," ventured Sara, a little flustered. "Aren't
they?"

The Echo glanced up at the Plynck with a twinkling smile. "Do you hear
that?" she asked. "Bless the child! She says rules are made to keep!"
She laughed to herself a little longer, then she turned to Sara more
soberly. "As far as your country is concerned, my dear, you are
doubtless right, and I suppose it's important for you to keep that
fact in mind. But here it's very different. Our rules are made to
break. Don't you hear the Plynck breaking them?"

So that was what she was doing! For the first time, Sara understood
why she had so enjoyed the delightful little snapping sounds, which
made her think of corn dancing against the lid of a corn-popper--or of
the snapping of little dry twigs under the pointed shoes of a brownie,
slipping through the woods alone on Christmas Eve. She thought it was
the most completely satisfying sound she had ever heard. She thought,
too, that the broken rules under the tree made a charming litter, and
wished that the Gunki who were raking them up would leave them there
instead. But they went on piling them into wheelbarrows and trundling
them down the road toward the smithy.

"They are taking them to be mended," said the Echo of the Plynck, who
had been watching her. "We believe in conservation, you see. Schlorge
mends them one day, and she breaks them the next, and so we usually
have plenty."

Sara was charmed. But as she stood gazing at the Plynck she remembered
what she had heard her say as she came in. "Will--will she fly?" she
whispered to the Echo.

"Well, I don't know," said the Echo of the Plynck. "There's a rule
that she must, and so it's quite an effort. And there's a rule that
she must not sit on that particular branch of the Gugollaph-tree. So
of course she usually sits there. You wouldn't think, yourself, that
she'd w