the world, as free as the air itself, and being carried along as though
she were a piece of light thistle-down on the back of a summer breeze.

That she was travelling very fast, she could see by the way in which
she out-stripped the clouds hurrying noiselessly across the sky. One
thing she knew,--whatever progress she was making was due, not to
herself (for she was making absolutely no effort at all, seeming to be
merely reclining at ease), but was the result of some other exertion
than her own. She was not frightened in the least, but, as she grew
accustomed to the peculiar mode of locomotion, became more and more
curious to discover the source of it.

She looked about her, but nothing was visible save the azure sky above
her and the green earth beneath. She seemed to be quite alone. The
sense of her solitude began to fill her with a deep awe, and she grew
strangely uneasy: as she thought of herself, a frail little girl, amid
the vastness of the big world.

How weak and helpless she was,--scarcely more important than one of the
wild-flowers she had used to tread on when she was n't being hurried
through space by the means of--she knew not what. To be sure, she was
pretty; but then they had been pretty too, and she had stepped on them,
and they had died, and she had gone away and no one had ever known.

"Oh, dear!" she thought, "it would be the easiest thing in the world
for me to be killed (even if I _am_ pretty), and no one would know it
at all. I wonder what is going to happen? I wish I had n't come."

"Don't be afraid!" said the familiar voice, suddenly. "We promised to
take care of you. We are truth itself. Don't be afraid!"