“One morning he looked over a high sky mountain--that’s what suns like to do best because it is so becoming--and he shone in a room of the sky where a little black star was sleeping. And he thought he would ask it what to do. So he said to it, ‘Little Black Star, where shall I be, now that I am all done and finished, nice and shiny?’ And the Little Black Star said: ‘You’re not done. What made you think you were done? Hardly anybody is ever done. I’ll tell you what to be. Be like a carriage and take all us little dark stars in, and whirl and whirl for about a million years, and make us all get bright too, and _then_ maybe you’ll be a true sun--but not all done, even then.’ So that’s what he decided to do, and he’s up there now, only you can’t see him, because he’s so far, and our sun is so bright, and he’s whirling and whirling, and lots more like him, getting to be made.” Delia followed Mary Elizabeth’s look into the blue. “I don’t believe it,” said she. “The sun is biggest and the moon is next. How could there be any other sun? And it don’t whirl. It don’t even rise and set. It stands still. Miss Messmore said so.” We looked at Mary Elizabeth, probably I alone having any impulse to defend her. And we became aware that she was quite white and trembling. In the same moment we understood that we were hearing something which we had been hearing without knowing that we heard. It was a thin, wavering strain of singing, in a man’s voice. We scrambled up, and looked over the edge of the band-stand. Coming unevenly down the broken brick walk that cut the schoolhouse grounds was Mary Elizabeth’s father. His hat was gone. It was he who was singing. He looked as he had looked that first day that I had seen him in the wood yard. We knew what was the matter. And all of us unconsciously did the cruel thing of turning and staring at Mary Elizabeth. In a moment she was over the side of the band-stand and running to him. She took him by the hand, and we saw that she meant to lead him home. Her little figure looked very tiny beside his gaunt frame, in its loosely hanging coat. I remember how the sun was pouring over them, and over the brilliant green beyond where blackbirds were walking. I have no knowledge of what made me do it--perhaps it was merely an attitude, created by the afternoon, of standing up for Mary Elizabeth no matter what befell; or it may have been a child’s crude will to challenge things; at any rate, without myself really deciding it, I suddenly took the way that she had taken, and caught up with the two. “Mary Elizabeth,” I meant to say, “I’m going.”