And, moreover, the foot no longer goes on alone: others have come
by tens, even by hundreds, to join it; and Alba begins to understand
what the dwarf meant by thousands. Thus the feet travel on, running some
to this side, some to that; here digging through a bed of clay, and
there burying themselves in a soft sand-hill, taking a mouthful of
carbon here, and of nitrogen there. But what are these two strange
articles of food? Nothing at all like bread and butter, you think.
Different, indeed, they seem; but you will one day learn that bread and
butter are made in part of these very same things, and they are just as
useful to Alba as your breakfast, dinner, and supper are to you. For
just as bread and butter, and other food, build your body, so carbon and
nitrogen are going to build his; and you will presently see what a fine,
large, strong body they can make. Then, perhaps, you will be better able
to understand what they are.
Shall we leave the feet to travel their own way for a while, and see
where the fairy has led the little hand?
QUERCUS ALBA'S NEW SIGHT OF THE UPPER-WORLD
It was a soft, helpless, little baby hand. Its folded fingers lay
listlessly in the fairy's gentle grasp. "Now we will go up," she said.
He had thought he was going down, and he had heard the chipping-birds
say he would never come back again. But he had no will to resist the
gentle motion, which seemed, after all, to be exactly what he wanted: so
he presently found himself lifted out of the dark earth, feeling the
sunshine again, and stirred by the breeze that rustled the dry leaves
that lay all about him.
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