Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
"It had not been the time of the full moon when she first came, but a
few days later it happened to be so, and as the weather was beautifully
fine just then there were almost no clouds in the sky, and the moon had
it all her own pretty way. One night Lena woke up suddenly--it seemed to
her that she had been asleep a long, long time, and she didn't feel the
least heavy or confused, but quite fresh and brisk as if she had had all
the sleep she needed. And the shining moonlight came pouring in at the
windows in a sort of wide band of light falling right across the bed and
showing out most beautifully the colours and patterns on the
old-fashioned curtains. They looked even brighter than by daylight, and
as Lena lay and looked at them, she saw wonderful new pictures that she
had never noticed before--the sort of pathway between the green branches
and foliage that seemed to lead up to one of the little bowers or
grottos grew more distinct, and as Lena tried to trace it out with her
eyes, she suddenly saw a little figure moving along the path she was
looking at. She rubbed her eyes and looked again--the figure had
disappeared, but instead she saw clearly in the moonlight two
butterflies flitting about the same path, darting first backwards, then
forwards, as if inviting her to follow them.
"'If only I were a fly and could walk straight up a wall,' thought Lena,
'I'd really step up that curtain and see if I couldn't make my way into
that grotto,' and then she laughed to herself at the fancy--'as if any
one _could_ walk into a picture!' she said.
"And then it seemed to her that the butterflies melted into the
leaves--and there was no movement at all on the curtains.
"'It must have been the trembling of the moonlight that made me fancy
it,' Lena said to herself. And the next morning when she awoke she stood
up on tiptoe to examine the particular spot where she had seen these
curious things. It looked just the same as the other parts of the
curtains--only half hidden among the bushy leaves near the rustic
doorway that Lena called the arbour, she found out a queer brown little
face that she had not seen before. It seemed to her to peep out at her
suddenly, and she fancied that it was the face of the figure she had
watched moving along the path in the moonlight.
"'How funny that I never noticed it before,' she said, for when she
looked at the same place on the pattern in other parts of the curtains
she noticed the same queer little brown face, just like a monkey peeping
from among the branches.
"She was so surprised that she thought she would ask Mrs. Denny if _she_
had ever noticed 'the monkeys,' but somehow it went quite out of her
head. It was not till the next night that she remembered anything more
about them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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