第58章

Every time he rose from looking through a star-hole, he felt as if his heart would break for, joy; and he said that if he had not cried, he did not know what would have become of him.

As soon as all had looked, the star was carefully fitted in again, a little mould was strewn over it, and the rest of the heap left as a sign that the star had been discovered.

At length one dug up a small star of a most lovely colour--a colour Diamond had never seen before. The moment the angel saw what it was, instead of showing it about, he handed it to one of his neighbours, and seated himself on the edge of the hole, saying:

"This will do for me. Good-bye. I'm off."They crowded about him, hugging and kissing him; then stood back with a solemn stillness, their wings lying close to their shoulders.

The little fellow looked round on them once with a smile, and then shot himself headlong through the star-hole. Diamond, as privileged, threw himself on the ground to peep after him, but he saw nothing.

"It's no use," said the captain. "I never saw anything more of one that went that way.""His wings can't be much use," said Diamond, concerned and fearful, yet comforted by the calm looks of the rest.

"That's true," said the captain. "He's lost them by this time.

They all do that go that way. You haven't got any, you see.""No," said Diamond. "I never did have any.""Oh! didn't you?" said the captain.

"Some people say," he added, after a pause, "that they come again.

I don't know. I've never found the colour I care about myself.

I suppose I shall some day."

Then they looked again at the star, put it carefully into its hole, danced around it and over it--but solemnly, and called it by the name of the finder.

"Will you know it again?" asked Diamond.

"Oh, yes. We never forget a star that's been made a door of."Then they went on with their searching and digging.

Diamond having neither pickaxe nor spade, had the more time to think.

"I don't see any little girls," he said at last.

The captain stopped his shovelling, leaned on his spade, rubbed his forehead thoughtfully with his left hand--the little angels were all left-handed--repeated the words "little girls," and then, as if a thought had struck him, resumed his work, saying--"I think I know what you mean. I've never seen any of them, of course;but I suppose that's the sort you mean. I'm told--but mind I don't say it is so, for I don't know--that when we fall asleep, a troop of angels very like ourselves, only quite different, goes round to all the stars we have discovered, and discovers them after us.

I suppose with our shovelling and handling we spoil them a bit;and I daresay the clouds that come up from below make them smoky and dull sometimes. They say--mind, I say they say--these other angels take them out one by one, and pass each round as we do, and breathe over it, and rub it with their white hands, which are softer than ours, because they don't do any pick-and-spade work, and smile at it, and put it in again: and that is what keeps them from growing dark.""How jolly!" thought Diamond. "I should like to see them at their work too.--When do you go to sleep?" he asked the captain.

"When we grow sleepy," answered the captain. "They do say--but mind I say they say--that it is when those others--what do you call them?

I don't know if that is their name; I am only guessing that may be the sort you mean--when they are on their rounds and come near any troop of us we fall asleep. They live on the west side of the hill.

None of us have ever been to the top of it yet."Even as he spoke, he dropped his spade. He tumbled down beside it, and lay fast asleep. One after the other each of the troop dropped his pickaxe or shovel from his listless hands, and lay fast asleep by his work.

"Ah!" thought Diamond to himself, with delight, "now the girl-angels are coming, and I, not being an angel, shall not fall asleep like the rest, and I shall see the girl-angels."But the same moment he felt himself growing sleepy. He struggled hard with the invading power. He put up his fingers to his eyelids and pulled them open. But it was of no use. He thought he saw a glimmer of pale rosy light far up the green hill, and ceased to know.

When he awoke, all the angels were starting up wide awake too.

He expected to see them lift their tools, but no, the time for play had come. They looked happier than ever, and each began to sing where he stood. He had not heard them sing before.

"Now," he thought, "I shall know what kind of nonsense the angels sing when they are merry. They don't drive cabs, I see, but they dig for stars, and they work hard enough to be merry after it."And he did hear some of the angels' nonsense; for if it was all sense to them, it had only just as much sense to Diamond as made good nonsense of it. He tried hard to set it down in his mind, listening as closely as he could, now to one, now to another, and now to all together. But while they were yet singing he began, to his dismay, to find that he was coming awake--faster and faster.

And as he came awake, he found that, for all the goodness of his memory, verse after verse of the angels' nonsense vanished from it.

He always thought he could keep the last, but as the next began he lost the one before it, and at length awoke, struggling to keep hold of the last verse of all. He felt as if the effort to keep from forgetting that one verse of the vanishing song nearly killed him.

And yet by the time he was wide awake he could not be sure of that even.

It was something like this:

White hands of whiteness Wash the stars' faces, Till glitter, glitter, glit, goes their brightness Down to poor places.

This, however, was so near sense that he thought it could not be really what they did sing.