ive. The gipsy
woman moved her finger about on his forehead as if she had been writing
something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his
feet; then she said--

"May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong
heart to love with, and the strong arms to work with, and the strong
feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own." Then she
said something in a strange language no one could understand, and
suddenly added--

"Well, I must be saying 'so long'--and glad to have made your
acquaintance." And she turned and went back to her home--the tent by the
grassy roadside.

The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert
said, "How silly of her! Even sunset didn't put _her_ right. What rot
she talked!"

"Well," said Cyril, "if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of
her"--

"Decent?" said Anthea; "it was very nice indeed of her. I think she's a
dear"--

"She's just too frightfully nice for anything," said Jane.

And they went home--very late for tea and unspeakably late for dinner.
Martha scolded, of course. But the Lamb was safe.

"I say--it turned out we wanted the Lamb as much as anyone," said
Robert, later.

"Of course."

"But do you feel different about it now the sun's set?"

"_No_," said all the others together.

"Then it's lasted over sunset with us."

"No, it hasn't," Cyril explained. "The wish didn't do anything to _us_.
We always wanted him with all our hearts when we were our proper selves,
only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert." Robert bore
this much with a strange calm.

"I certainly _thought_ I didn't want him this morning," said he.
"Perhaps I _was_ a pig. But everything looked so different when we
thought we were going to lose him."

And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean
it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep
putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has
crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it next
time you feel piggy yourself and want to get rid of any of your brothers
and sisters. I hope this doesn't often happen, but I daresay it has
happened sometimes, even to you!

CHAPTER IV

WINGS

The next day was very wet--too wet to go out, and far too wet to think
of disturbing a Sand-fairy so sensitive to water that he still, after
thousands of years, felt the pain of