"Once upon a time," went on Uncle Andy
slowly, "there was a young bat--a baby bat so small you might have put
him into your mother's thimble. He lived high up in the peak of the
roof of an old barn down in the meadows beside the golden, rushing
waters of the Nashwaak stream, not more than five or six miles from
Fredericton. We'll call him Little Silk Wing."
"_I_'ve been to Fredericton!" interjected the Child with an important
air.
"Really!" said Uncle Andy. "Well, Little Silk Wing hadn't. And now,
who's going to tell this story, you or I?"
"I won't interrupt any more!" said the Child penitently. "But why was
he called Little Silk Wing, Uncle Andy?"
His uncle looked at him in despair. Then he answered, with unwonted
resignation, "His wings weren't really any silkier than those of his
tiny sister. But he got hold of the name _first_, that's all. So it
was his!
"When the two were first born they were so tiny as to be quite
ridiculous--little shriveled, pale mites, that could do nothing but
hang to their mother's breasts, and nurse diligently, and grow. They
grew almost at once to the same color as their mother, plumped out till
they were so big as to be not quite lost in a thimble and developed a
marvelous power of clinging to their mother's body while she went
careering through the air in her dizzy evolutions.
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