The Fretful Child stared about very hard indeed. Then, because he couldn’t see any adventure tree, he was just beginning to take a long breath in order to cry. But he stopped short, just as his face was beginning to turn from pink to purple. For, right in the midst of the Nobodies stood the most beautiful adventure tree you ever saw. Its pale blue branches were weighed down to the place where the ground would have been, if there had been a ground in Nowhereland. And from even the lowest branches there hung luscious adventures that were dark red, and just right for picking. All about lay others that the wind had blown down, or that the Nobodies had picked, tasted, and thrown away. But they had missed the very best of all. And this was perfectly natural, when you stop to think that the Nobodies have no eyes, and their faces are made up entirely of cheeks. But the Fretful Child was not a Nobody. He had eyes. He saw the red adventures dangling there, and he squealed and crowed, and did all the things that fretful children never do. And then he picked one. Now it is strange to tell about, but as soon as the Fretful Child bit into that adventure, he stopped being a Fretful Child, and became a Regular Boy. Even his skin, at that very moment forgot how to change from pink to purple, as it used to when he wanted to cry. When the Nobodies felt what he was doing, they became very angry indeed, and shouted Nonsense at him, and threw Nothings at him. But these did not hurt him much, and so he went right on eating his adventure. The adventure did not taste at all the way he thought it would, and it puckered his mouth all up. So he tried to hold his breath to make his face change from pink to purple, but it wouldn’t do what he told it to. And then he knew that the adventure must have done something to him. He was not sure, but he strongly suspected that it must have changed him into a Regular Boy. So he stopped crying, even before he had let out the tiniest bit of a sound, and he smiled all over instead. And thereupon the Nobodies, feeling that some thing just hadn’t happened, dropped their nothings on the spot. And a brand new adventure bloomed on the tree, where the one the Fretful Child had eaten hung. He squealed in glee, and looked around for the Oldest Woman, but as she was as wise as she was old, and equally as gossipy, she must have ridden away on her carpet-sweeper to tell her friends about it, for she was not to be found. Just as he was wondering where she could have gone to, he felt a tugging at his right arm. It was the embroidered stork. Without a minute’s delay he climbed upon the handkerchief, stuck out his tongue at the Nobodies, which shows that he was a Regular Boy, and, higgelley, piggelley, before you might say “I spy” three times without winking, he was back in his own little crib.