ling at him.

"Give me one?"

"Oh, no, I can't!" answered the child, staring at him with big eyes.
"They're for someone else."

"Whom are they for?"

"You can come along and see."

"Oh, say," whispered Ellen to Teddy, "let's go back!" But Teddy
answered: "No, no! Come on and see where they're going." So Ellen
reluctantly followed him, and they joined the other little children
journeying along the rainbow.

The strange little children seemed very happy, and they laughed and
talked together in their soft, clear voices, though Teddy could not
always understand what they said. He could understand best the little
boy to whom he had spoken first. Teddy asked him again where they were
going, and this time the little boy (he seemed to be the captain of
the band) told him that they were going down to the earth. He said that
every week they had a holiday, and then they crossed the rainbow bridge,
and carried the flowers from their flower-beds down to the little earth
children.

"But what little children?" asked Teddy, curiously.

"Oh, you'll see!" answered the little boy, laughing, and then he began
to talk with the others, and Teddy could no longer understand him.

It was not long after this that Teddy saw before him the end of the
rainbow, and where should it go but right through the window of a great
square yellow house, set back of a high wall and in the middle of a
lawn.

"Oh dear! we can't get to the end of it after all," cried Teddy, and the
next thing he knew the little children were walking through the window
just as if nothing were there, and he and Ellen were following them.

"Where are we?" asked Ellen, looking about her, half frightened and yet
curious.

"I can't think," said Teddy. "Seems as if I knew, but I can't think."

They were in a long, bare, clean room, and on each side of it were rows
of little white beds, and in each bed lay or sat a little child. A few
of the children were asleep, most of them were awake, but all looked
pale and thin. Here and there at the sides of the beds grown-up people
were sitting, sometimes showing the children pictures or books, and
sometimes reading to them.

The children from the rainbow walked slowly up the aisle between the row
of beds, and, strangely enough, no one seemed to look at them or pay the
least attention, any more than if they had not been there, and at last
Teddy began to believe that they could not see them.

Often the little strange children st