PAGE 3
Sweet-One-Darling And The Moon-Garden
by
“I should say I did!” exclaimed Sweet-One-Darling. “I never supposed there could be so beautiful a place. I see a large, fair garden, filled with shrubbery and flowers; there are fountains and velvety hillocks and silver lakes and embowered nooks. A soft, dim, golden light broods over the quiet spot.”
“Yes, that is the light which shines through the Moon from the bright side; but it is very faint,” said the Dream-Fairies.
“And I see the little babies asleep,” continued Sweet-One-Darling. “They are lying in the embowered nooks, near the fountains, upon the velvety hillocks, amid the flowers, under the trees, and upon the broad leaves of the lilies in the silver lakes. How cunning and plump and sweet they are–I must take some of them back with me!”
If they had not been afraid of waking the babies the Dream-Fairies would have laughed uproariously at this suggestion. Just fancy Sweet-One-Darling, a baby herself, undertaking the care of a lot of other little babies fresh from the garden on the other side of the Moon!
“I wonder how they all came here in this Moon-Garden?” asked Sweet-One-Darling. And the Dream-Fairies told her.
They explained that whenever a mother upon earth asked for a little baby of her own her prayer floated up and up–many leagues up–and was borne to the other side of the Moon, where it fell and rested upon a lily leaf or upon a bank of flowers in that beautiful garden. And resting there the prayer presently grew and grew until it became a cunning little baby! So when the Doctor-Man came with his box the baby was awaiting him, and he had only to carry the precious little thing to the Mother and give her prayer back to her to keep and to love always. There are so very many of these tiny babies in the Moon-Garden that sometimes–he does n’t do it of purpose–but sometimes the Doctor-Man brings the baby to the wrong mother, and that makes the real mother, who prayed for the baby, feel very, very badly.
Well, I actually believe that Sweet-One-Darling would gladly have spent the rest of her life clinging to the edge of the Moon and peeping over at the babies in that beautiful garden. But the Dream-Fairies agreed that this would never do at all. They finally got Sweet-One-Darling away by promising to stop on their journey home to replenish her nursing bottle at the Milky Way, which, as perhaps you know, is a marvellous lacteal ocean in the very midst of the sky. This beverage had so peculiar and so soothing a charm that presently Sweet-One-Darling went sound asleep, and when she woke up–goodness me! it was late in the morning, and her brother, little Our-Golden-Son, was standing by her cradle, wondering why she did n’t wake up to look at his beautiful new toy elephant.
Sweet-One-Darling told Good-Old-Soul and little Our-Golden-Son all about the garden on the other side of the Moon.
“I am sure it is true,” said Good-Old-Soul. “And now that I come to think of it, that is the reason why the Moon always turns her bright side toward our earth! If the other side were turned this way the light of the sun and the noise we make would surely awaken and frighten those poor little babies!”
Little Our-Golden-Son believed the story, too. And if Good-Old-Soul and little Our-Golden-Son believed it, why should n’t you? If it were not true how could I have known all about it and told it to you?