“You can come along and see.” “Oh, say,” whispered Ellen to Teddy, “let’s go back!” But Teddy answered: “No, no! Come on and see where they’re going.” So Ellen reluctantly followed him, and they joined the other little children journeying along the rainbow. The strange little children seemed very happy, and they laughed and talked together in their soft, clear voices, though Teddy could not always understand what they said. He could understand best the little boy to whom he had spoken first. Teddy asked him again where they were going, and this time the little boy (he seemed to be the captain of the band) told him that they were going down to the earth. He said that every week they had a holiday, and then they crossed the rainbow bridge, and carried the flowers from their flower-beds down to the little earth children. “But _what_ little children?” asked Teddy, curiously. “Oh, you’ll see!” answered the little boy, laughing, and then he began to talk with the others, and Teddy could no longer understand him. It was not long after this that Teddy saw before him the end of the rainbow, and where should it go but right through the window of a great square yellow house, set back of a high wall and in the middle of a lawn. “Oh dear! we can’t get to the end of it after all,” cried Teddy, and the next thing he knew the little children were walking through the window just as if nothing were there, and he and Ellen were following them. “Where are we?” asked Ellen, looking about her, half frightened and yet curious. “I can’t think,” said Teddy. “Seems as if I knew, but I can’t think.” They were in a long, bare, clean room, and on each side of it were rows of little white beds, and in each bed lay or sat a little child. A few of the children were asleep, most of them were awake, but all looked pale and thin. Here and there at the sides of the beds grown-up people were sitting, sometimes showing the children pictures or books, and sometimes reading to them. The children from the rainbow walked slowly up the aisle between the row of beds, and, strangely enough, no one seemed to look at them or pay the least attention, any more than if they had not been there, and at last Teddy began to believe that they could not see them. Often the little strange children stopped to smooth a pillow or to softly stroke the cheek or hand of one of the little earth children. Here and there one would linger behind the others, by some bed, and after a moment would lay its bunch of flowers on the pillow. Then the little child in the bed would turn its head and smile, even if it were asleep, and its face would shine as if with some inward happiness. The whole room seemed filled with the perfume of flowers, and Teddy wondered that no one paid any attention to it.