DREAM POWDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 822, 16 November 1929, Page 31

DREAM POWDER

( Second-pr ize Story) Drip, drip fell the starling's .tears, for something terrible had happened. Even the little brown gnome, who was the bird’s special friend, could not cheer her up. for, while she just went for a little outing to stretch her wings, somebody had climbed up the tree and taken the five little eggs out of her nest. Xo wonder she cried! That meant there were no babies for her this year, no little mouths to feed, no one to teach to fly. The beetle knew who had taken them, for he had seen Tommie Green | climb up the tree and take them away. So the little brown gnome wiped the tears away, and said he would try and get them back. Up in Tommie’s room the eggs lay on the shelf, and Tommie was downstairs having his supper. The little brown gnome slipped quietly in at the window and scattered some special dream powder on Tommie's pillow; then out the window he flew, and no one knew he had been there. When Tommie came up to bed. he looked at the eggs and thought how clever he had been to get them all by himself. He was very tired, and he was no sooner in bed than he was asleep. Then the dream powder started working. What awful dreams he had! He dreamed that the poor little mother bird had died of a broken heart, longing for the eggs he had stolen, that the world was an awful place without a bird —no songs from the trees, no one to throw crumbs to. just because some thoughtless boy had stolen all the eggs—that the mother bird was calling to him to bring back her eggs, and all through the night he dreamed these things. The first thing he did when lie woke up was to think of the poor little mother bird, and, slipping out of bed, he dressed quickly, and ran outside with the eggs held carefully in his cap. He ran to the tree and, climbing up, carefully laid the eggs back in their soft little nest, and he said to himself. “Well, I’ll never take eggs again. I just never thought about the poor little birds.” Next morning the sun shone and the starling was as happy as happy could be, and the little brown gnome chuckled to himself as he thought of the powder. —Dick Schofield, aged S.