about in the blue water on which it swam.

"No, no, dearest boy. You really can't have as much as that. And now
snuggle down and go to sleep again. I wonder what made you wake up?"

Mark seized upon this splendid excuse to detain his mother for awhile.

"Well, it wasn't ergzackly a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I
was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?'
and then I was frightened and. . . ."

"Yes, well, my sweetheart, you must tell Mother in the morning."

Mark perceived that he had been too slow in working up to his crisis and
desperately he sought for something to arrest the attention of his
beloved audience.

"Perhaps my Guardian Angel was beside me all the time, because, look!
here's a feather."

He eyed his mother, hoping against hope that she would pretend to accept
his suggestion; but alas, she was severely unimaginative.

"Now, darling, don't talk foolishly. You know perfectly that is only a
feather which has worked its way out of your pillow."

"Why?"

The monosyllable had served Mark well in its time; but even as he fell
back upon this stale resource he knew it had failed at last.