Her Birthday

and returning with the tidings, “It’s very
cold in the woods!”

If you are courageous enough to leave the
paths and hazard yourself among the under-
wood and the litter of bygone autumns,
twenty paces will take you to the small
Gothic doors of the Oak-men ; twenty more
to the cavern of the Great Bruin, and the
pollard tree on the top of which the foxes
live ; while yet another twenty, and you are
at the burrows of the kindliest of all insects,
the leaf-cutter bees. Once —in parenthesis
—when a little maid was weeping because
she had lost her way at dusk in the Forest
mazes, it was a leaf-cutter bee that tunnelled
a straight line through the trees, so that the
nearest road lamp, miles away, twinkled right
into the Forest, and she was able to guide her-
self home. Indeed, it will only take ten min-
utes if you do not dawdle, to get to the dread-
ful webs of the Iron Spider, and when you
do reach that spot, the wisest thing you can
do is to follow the example of the tiny
flame-elf when — match is blown out — clap
on your cap of darkness and- scuttle back to
fairyland.