BUT the Child was only sunk into a dream of delight, and was wishing _he_
were a sunbeam or a moonbeam; and he would have been glad to hear more
and more, and for ever. But at last, as all was still, he opened his
eyes and looked around for his dear guest; but she was flown far away; so
he could not bear to sit there any longer alone, and he rose and went to
the gurgling brook. It gushed and rolled so merrily, and tumbled so
wildly along as it hurried to throw itself head over heels into the
river, just as if the great massy rock out of which it sprang were close
behind it, and could only be escaped by a break-neck leap.
Then the Child began to talk to the little waves, and asked them whence
they came. They would not stay to give him an answer, but danced away,
one over another; till at last, that the sweet Child might not be
grieved, a drop of water stopped behind a piece of rock. From her the
Child heard strange histories, but he could not understand them all, for
she told him about her former life, and about the depths of the mountain.
“A long while ago,” said the Drop of Water, “I lived with my countless
sisters in the great ocean, in peace and unity. We had all sorts of
pastimes; sometimes we mounted up high into the air, and peeped at the
stars; then we sank plump down deep below, and looked how the coral
builders work till they are tired, that they may reach the light of day
at last. But I was conceited, and thought myself much better than my
sisters. And so one day, when the sun rose out of the sea, I clung fast
to one of his hot beams, and thought that now I should reach the stars,
and become one of them. But I had not ascended far, when the sunbeam
shook me off, and in spite of all I could say or do, let me fall into a
dark cloud. And soon a flash of fire darted through the cloud, and now I
thought I must surely die; but the whole cloud laid itself down softly
upon the top of a mountain, and so I escaped with my fright, and a black
eye. Now I thought I should remain hidden, when all on a sudden I
slipped over a round pebble, fell from one stone to another, down into
the depths of the mountain, till at last it was pitch dark, and I could
neither see nor hear anything. Then I found, indeed, that ‘pride goeth
before a fall,’ resigned myself to my fate, and, as I had already laid
aside all my unhappy pride in the cloud, my portion was now the salt of
humility; and after undergoing many purifications from the hidden virtues
of metals and minerals, I was at length permitted to come up once more
into the free cheerful air; and now will I run back to my sisters, and
there wait patiently till I am called to something better.”
But hardly had she done when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop
of water by her hair and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret,
and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth.