A Little World for Little People

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 33

A Little World for Little People

friendship is a steady light shining in dark places

TWO COMRADES

TWO, eight, six, one, three, four, five, seven, nine. . . . Eight, three, six. fifteen, twenty—” “Please stop counting. Mister Woodpecker,” begged the Little Thought, leaning patiently against his yellow and green wheelbarrow that was drawn up beside the Hollow Tree. “I still have a big load of messages waiting to be handed up. There were thirty-two in that last batch, and I'm just longing to sh,ow von this pretty piece of moss a Sunbeam has sent me.” “Well, there's no moss growing in the Hollow Tree at any rate.” said the Woodpecker. “At n time like this I have scarcely room to turn. I keep on pecking and pecking to enlarge the hollow, but there is a constant pressure on space. In places the davlight is coming through, and L have peeked almost down to the roots. Please don’t tell the Dawn Lady, because she thinks there is room for all the messages she chooses to write.” “Oh, no,’’ answered the Little Thought, earnestly. “I shall not breathe a word about it. But aren’t those puzzle competitions fun ? Half the Sunbeams put ‘Bowls’ instead of ‘Polo.’ Thev mistook the pail for a bucket in those pictured clues, but that is not to be wondered at. Very few grown-up people know the difference between a pail and a bucket.” “Well,” remarked the Woodpecker, “my dictionary calls a pail ‘an open vessel for carrying liquids,’ and a bucket ‘a vessel in which water is drawn or carried,’ so perhaps you can carry anv sort of liquid in a pail and only water in a bucket.” “But,” protested the Little Thought, “I have seen Sunbeams carrving sand in buckets, and sand is not liquid at all.” “That just shows that dictionaries don’t know everything,” remarked the Woodpecker, triumphantly. “I am going to put ‘also sand’ in the margin beside ‘bucket.’ “And how about mud for making mud-pies?” queried the Little Thought, eagerly. “And ‘mud for mud-pies’,” added the Woodpecker, solemnly. “We seem to be spending rather much time talking. I have sorted all these messages. n Please hand up some more. . . . . HQ I _T Five, four, seven, nine, six, , .AJL fV-7 &AaJ~wv ~ three, two. Yes, there are __ - * twenty-eight in this bundle.” V_ -——"