Once upon a time, high up in the sky, there lived a little cloud named Puffy. Puffy was not like the other clouds; while they were content floating about, Brazing a dull gray and drizzling water on the earth, he loved to picture to himself a great golden castle where the sunbeams came and went like happy, busy fairies.
“Puffy, where do you go?” said the old Sun one day, stopping his longest ray to pick this curious little cloud. “You seem always in a hurry.”
“Please don’t be angry with me, dear Sun,” said the cloud, dancing round and round the bright ray like a feather blown by the wind. “But I want to know if there is really such a place as the cloud castle where the shadows never come, and where the sunbeams live.”
“That’s the cloud castle, is it?” said the Sun. “Yes, yes; all that is true. But you will not find the cloud castle in the direction you are looking. Go the other way. See those rain clouds? They look heavy laden, do they not? Keep near them; perhaps you will meet someone who will help you.”
So off went Puffy, full of hope and that curiosity which little people so often have, and so few grown-up folks remember.
It was just four o’clock on a sunny afternoon when Puffy set forth. By five he was in the midst of a heavy rain cloud, and a little before six was so fortunate as to meet a little voice crying bitterly.
“What’s the matter?” said Puffy.
“I’m—I’m sure you will laugh at me,” sobbed the little voice.
“I’m sure I shall not,” said Puffy.
“Oh, but you can’t tell,” returned the little strange creature, whose home was a heavy rain cloud. “I only want to go home, and I’m not happy anywhere except with my Mamma sunshine. And then, too, I’m afraid to go,” and the sound of something like a deep moan seemed to echo on all sides.
“But surely,” said Puffy, after a few moments’ thought, “surely you can go?”
“I don’t know which way to go,” answered the voice, which was now less like a voice, and more like a string of bullets cannonading a fort. What a dreadful noise it made!
“I’m sure I can help you,” said Puffy. “Now, what have I to do? I heard your mother mentioned and I think I know her, though I never saw her. Is her name sunshine?”
“I think it is,” answered the strange voice.
“What is yours?” inquired Puff.
“Voice-low,” answered the little creature, who proved to be nothing more or less than a splitter of raindrops; for when they come down in a confused mass and dash against anything, it makes the noise called “rain.”
Puffy raised the wind, which blew straight to the mother sunshine, and the little splitter of raindrops was carried safely home.
“Now,” cried Puffy, “I want to reach the cloud castle. Lead me, J stopped at the rainbow colours on the way; fast as the wind I reach there at last.” There stood the doors of the cloud castle, not like doors, such as people know upon the earth, but just of light and air, through which the little fairy creatures came and went like bees from a hive.
One of the fairies had a very sprightly little pony of silver beam, which she lent to Puffy as a thank you for the kindnesses the little splitter of raindrops had received. Both the door of the cloud castle and the rainbow colours are very changeable, so that whosoever wishes to see them must be quick.
Next day, at the same hour, at a place a little distance from the sunbeam, stood old Mother monarch of the day.
Four o’clock was long past when the bright fairy monarch, mother of the sunbeam, missed the bright gallopings of her youngest child. Where could he be?
Perhaps he had fallen over some little piece of rainbow, or tumbled through a sunbeam on the way to the dew drop, or, or—but who could ever have guessed it?
Grown up people think Midsummer Eve very beautiful; that is nothing to what it is to the fairies! All stories which say that the whole world is filled on this night with fairy feet and happiness, don’t tell half.
But old Mother Day was very peevish to over the heads of the little clouds, with rainbow crystalline silk gauze and damask, and a headpiece of kind language. “But that,” said the headpiece, “was all that I could do.”
“Well, call all the other clouds,” said old Mother Day; “It is getting dark, and will be very soon dark, and we have not done as much for the fairies as we ought. Children who do not behave properly must not expect to have anything given them.”
Then the little clouds came, floating down as quickly as possible; for the rainbow was just beaten over the other ones.
“Sit down,” said Mother Day, holding out rainbow silk damask and gauze mended and sewn together. “Rainbows are not to be made in a quarter of an hour, like dresses; sit down all of you, so that the children may not think that we care for them more than everybody else, and so that wee-called grown people may not think that the fairies are too good for satin or tinsel to climb without to be gapes,” and so saying, Mother Day hid herself as much as she could, at least, over the wall she did.
Thus the little clouds could be grown up people.