RUBY'S VISITOR. 109

“O dear!” cried Ruby, turning pale, “ I could n’t think of
it, —I could n’t possibly.”

“OQ, it’s of no consequence,’ replied the Man in the Moon,
looking quite unconcerned, —“ none in the world; it’s just
as well. J think I must be going now. There won’t be any-
body to ring the nine-o’clock bell if I don’t.” And before
Ruby could find words to speak, he had walked with a serious
air to the window and disappeared.

Ruby started, stared, and rubbed her eyes to look out after
him. The forest was quite still; the wind had cried itself to
sleep; and her father was just coming up the footpath that
led to the door. “

Ruby, bewildered, looked up, — miles and miles away at the
moon. The old gentleman’s solemn face was staring down
out of it; and if it had not been for the branch of a little toss-
ing birch-tree that came in the way just then, she would have
been sure — perfectly sure — that he winked at her. Though
T have been told that her father, with the stupidity common
to parents, teachers, older sisters, and all ignorant people,
continues somewhat sceptical on that point to this day.

It is reported, I believe, by a correspondent of a Patagonia
paper, who found it in a Kamtschatkan exchange, which had
it from the editor of a Boorioboola daily, who copied it from
a popular magazine issued on the Mountains of the Moon, —
where, of course, they ought to know, —that all this hap-
pened about the time when the Man in the Moon was hunt- |
ing for a wife.