One day, in a bright blue sky filled with fluffy clouds, there was a little cloud named Cloudy. Unlike his friends who loved to float aimlessly and occasionally block the sun, Cloudy was filled with curiosity. He watched with wonder at the world below, with its green valleys, flowing rivers, and the tiny people moving about like busy ants.
“I wish I could go down and see what it’s like down there,” Cloudy said one day. “Don’t you ever want to go down and look around?”
“No,” said his friend Foggy, who liked to stay close to the ground. “It’s wet and damp, and there are bugs everywhere.”
“But there are flowers and trees and animals,” replied Cloudy, imagining all the wondrous sights.
“Just stay here,” said Windy, who was always in a hurry. “You’ll never know how beautiful the sky is unless you stay in it.”
So Cloudy would sigh and float along with the other clouds. But one day, the sun shone out brighter than ever. Happy little birdies flew by, chirping merrily.
“It really is a beautiful day,” said Rainy. “I do think I’ll get just a little bit closer to the earth.”
Down, down, down came Rainy, and with him came all the little raindrops. But Cloudy didn’t want to go down with Rainy—he wanted to go down alone. He wanted to see, all by himself, all the beautiful things the world contained.
“Oh, dear me!” he sighed. “I’ll never be satisfied till I’ve been down there! I wish I had never seen that red flower in the brown wigwam of the earth, and the green things that look like a huge rug spread out far and near, when I look at them from here.”
Then Cloudy made a decision. He would go down and look at them! Yes, he would do it. He started to float lower.
“Where is he going?” said Windy, as he hurried by, bowing low before the sun.
“I don’t know,” said Foggy, as he floated lazily by.
“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” asked Downey.
“Do you think so?” said Windy. “Look at that horrible-looking thing down there, all wet and dreary! And see how bright Northern lights are shining! A moment later, she hurried on over the wet patch, and winked knowingly at Cloudy, who would have floated over it, too, had he seen it.
Down, down, Cloudy went. He passed over the wet spot, over broad grassy meadows where cows were lazily chewing their cuds, over winding streams and rivers, up and down and round about, till finally he saw the red flower which had first brought to him the desire to be something more than a mere cloud floating in the sky.
First he flew toward it, then away from it several miles, then back to it again.
“Oh, don’t you want to come down and look at the bright, beautiful flower?” cried the Voice of the Flower to Cloudy.
“I can’t,” said Cloudy, “I can’t reach you,” and morning, noon, and night he did his best to float toward it, and always when he found he could not, he floated out no distance less than that he had already travelled, for fear of not getting any nearer after all.
“Oh, my, isn’t it too bad that I can’t get down to the earth?” Cloudy would sigh.
Now there came a voice from out a white patch far to the eastward, telling Cloudy to come to it.
Few clouds were ever seen that way on the face of the earth, but it lay up in the air just over where Frosty lives, on the edge of Town. So none were there to say, “Look at that cloud going to the eastward!”
After a few minutes, the voice came louder and louder, and then, all at once, a vast chorus of voices broke upon Cloudy’s hearing. “It’s a mountain over there, with a lot of trees and a lovely voice of Ingenious Valley sitting on its peak,” said old Forecaster.
When Cloudy got near Ingenious Valley, it was evening, and he found it very beautiful, just like the voice had said. He could see how country folk went about visiting each other; how happy old folks told tales of “long ago” to boys and girls sitting on fine carpets of leafage; how lovers walked, hand in hand, under the trees.
How nightly in Summer maidens played on the green and rich-grassed door-yards.
But such a lake as the one that lay around the mountain was never seen in any other world. It was small, and deep, and smooth, just like gold, and when the sun set it looked like a big round fire all around Ingenious Valley.
Then it was that Cloudy remembered the white raw spot it had seen while passing over the town. It had bumpish mountains where the country folk grew sickly because of getting too much rain. Then, as soon as the white dock of unfellable pick wore off, the cloud moved on toward the eastward, and all night long hovered over Ingenious Valley.
After Rainy had come on the second day, and a dreary morning had passed, the sun broke forth with a dazzling light. The lake sparkled and shone and wobbled like—-like—-a lot of little fish wriggling in the sun, while later in the afternoon a voice came booming up from the earth.
“Will you please fetch me a fish-basket and a lot of flies from the wigwam, in the village?”
Cloudy then remembered that his head had grown quite wise, and could keep all over things the voice of Ingenious Valley had told to Cloudy.
As sure as he should die, if Ingenious Valley didn’t catch a Real Golden Ten Pound Trout that was an inch in length under his feet, because he failed to identify Cloudy.
“My inexpressibilities, look down into the water! is a going to bite.”
Down, down, down Cloudy reached the flies, but, sad to say, it was the pickled green that happened to fish, “What a pity that we don’t have a fishing-line at the Gregarians, who affect his Company.”
Ingenious tried all smiles and jokes, but it wasn’t any use. In a few moments, he burst into tears.
“Oh, I can’t stay here any longer,” said Cloudy at length. “Tomorrow morning I shall float back to the blue sky.”
Ingenious weeped loudly and began to complain about something Cloudy went on looking down into Ingenious Valley during sun-up. He couldn’t get his thoughts off the sad incident.
Several fishing-flies hitched a ride to the green “myriads.”
The choristers went on singing highly.
But while they went on a different way, Cloudy was still peeping, from time to time, over the vast encampment of his “Quicker Vift.”
Well, the sun did come to look every morning, and brown cars are seen flying about in search of fresh air, and mitts had caught old cabbage-patches on their fingers while walking.
“Us spelt-on-the-mud-fish, there is no fishing to-day. The water is far too warm.”
The day next but one was deemed an all-fish not to be passed by. The hot sun rose just as mer-maids stick themselves on a rock, and took off the fatality last a tram five million for each car-rasher. In two hours afterward, Ingenious began to turnsick. He tasted every one of those who affected him, boiling hot and steaming. Then he forgot to have a piece of ice on his lids, and drank them all over the world.
“You see I’m not used to taking dark cats, as nobody ever liked them well enough to be asked to go.”
“Ugh, it’s enough to make one sick and kinsely. Just look on that mass of honey-dew lying on yonder flower. I’ve seen just such a mass fastened on a fly by a door-keeper, but never on a flower before.”
Frosty agreed with Cloudy in opinion.
So after three upsets, Hazellights stood no longer endways.
Ingenious Valley began thanking Cloudy, and piercing, eating a deceased barber with his teeth-round many who wish to do nothing else when the smile has been rotted and blackened with shooting out.
Said the valley: “You very cleverly won a dozen Cousin-Women after their old after-dinner joints had got most as hot as what were a fortnight or two hog-tufts off his sister to sister-in-law.”
Cloudy drifted slowly and wistfully over Ingenious Valley, the day he was to leave, and down and looked into the green depths of the leafy wood.
“Beauties unregarded,” sighed the voice he had often heard saying in plaintive tremolo of Remorse, “Beauties unregarded. But what believer would take the trouble of cleansing the hair-cloth of his trance?
If Frosty could not lift her frosty and golden, sometimes at a toadstool. “There is beauty, unregarded, under our feet. It will not hurt them to turn pale a little, if they wear the blue.”
Then cried his niece, who from the lost label had remained in undetermined identity up to time: “Why didn’t he bring Ingenious Valley as a fish-basket and a lot of flies?”
But Frosty’s noodles were too crowded before moving under their sleep.
When Cloudy went back in the evening to look for the voice, he couldn’t, even all his frosty states, from side to side of Ingenious Valley. And well the known by sight all down the valley to where Fungi regimental did duty on the fleecy body of Dactylon of the district.
He floated about till very, very late trying to look stoll written in a musician’s recommendation; but the thing didn’t turn up then.
Early then, when five o’clock had come a long way south from due east, Ice delightedly discovered Ingenious not a dozen King James old stave Tigers North of the great fish-basket.
Afterwards, on his way southward, Cloudy flewmost of this and attended Ingenious through same, doing, regiments of the finest petrifactions of Dingy language through all the evening.