es; but that did no good.
Then they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their knees, and
stuck themselves out as far as they could, and made more faces; but that
did no good, neither. Then they looked up to the sky, and opened their
mouths wide, and gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and
wondered when it would rain; but that did no good, neither. And all the
while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, patiently. But
when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how high they had got, they said,
'Ach, Himmel!' and flew down in a great black cluster to the bottom; and
swept out a level spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and
began building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And the
Egyptians stood still again to stare at them; for the Gothic spirits had
got quite into a passion, and were really working very wonderfully. They
cut the sandstone into strips as fine as reeds; and put one reed on the
top of another, so that you could not see where they fitted: and they
twisted them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into
likenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each other; and
up they went, and up still, and they made spiral staircases at the
corners, for the loaded workers to come up by (for I saw they were but
weak imps, and could not fly with stones on their backs), and then they
made traceried galleries for them to run round by; and so up again; with
finer and finer work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the
thing for a tower or a pillar: and I heard them saying to one another,
'It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks; and if it were not for the
ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if they were going to build it
all with pillars as big as that!' But in a minute afterwards,--just as
the Gothic spirits had carried their work as high as the upper course,
but three or four, of the pyramid--the Egyptians called out to them to
'mind what they were about, for the sand was running away from under one
of their tower corners.' But it was too late to mind what they were
about; for, in another instant, the whole tower sloped aside; and the
Gothic imps rose out of it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud;
but screaming worse than any puffins you ever heard: and down came the
tower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right on the
flank of the pyramid; against which it snapped short off. And of course
that waked me!

MARY. What a sh