Once upon a time, on a beautiful starlit night, a little girl named Lily was listening to the stars from her window, as was her usual custom. Suddenly, she noticed one star crying very sorrowfully.
“What’s the matter, dear Star?” she called out.
“Oh! dear me!” moaned the star. “I have lost my voice, and I am sure to miss the concert to-morrow night. I cannot bear to think of all the stars coming from all the ends of the earth to sing and play joyfully without me. And I’m to sit here alone and hear them! It is too terrible!”
“Help! Help!” cried the star, and his voice grew fainter and fainter till at last it was a mere whisper.
“I really must go to bed now,” said the little girl, “but I shall be sure to tell the Wind about it to-morrow, and he will be sure to help you if it is possible.”
And off she went to dreamland.
The next night as soon as the day was done she jumped up from her chair and rushed to the window.
“Are you here, Wind?” she called, as soon as it began to sigh a little.
“I am here,” answered a loud voice outside her window.
The little girl clapped her hands for joy. “Then come here and help me to calm the seas and the people,” she called.
“I am spinning a web quite close to you,” answered the voice.
“Oh! I can never make you loose,” said the Wind, “and if I do the sea will come rushing in and drown all the little children in the world. Ask me something else!”
“I do not want anything else,” said the little girl.
So the Wind rushed away to do her bidding and came rushing back again to her window, while the moonbeams sat waiting for him.
“What news do you bring?” she whispered.
“Oh! such sad news!” cried the Wind. “As I swept over the sea I came to a great big ship close in shore which had to take lots of people to another place. I rushed the black clouds away and turned the sea white so that they might not be frightened, and then they gave loud cries for help.
“In the meantime the ship was going on the top of a great mountainous wave, and at last it dashed against the huge rocks, and all the people were drowned. I swept all the dances and jollities away from the little town where they were longing to go.”
“That was dreadful,” said the moonbeams; “but what about the star?”
“I have done nothing about him,” answered the Wind. “But there is no news about him, so he is probably better. I will go and see, for I found this request quite easy to grant.”
So he went dashing to the sky where the stars were dancing about in glee, and he dashed up to the unhappy voice, but alas! poor thing, he had still lost his voice.
“I don’t think he is going to sing for a long time,” said the Wind to the other stars, and they all sighed sadly.
“I am sure I can sing even now,” said the little star. “I can’t sing my right song, but I have learned another, and I will sing it now.”
And he opened his little heart and poured it all out. The song was only one note, but the note was very fine, and so resolved.
Then all the other stars joined in and sang the song, and the song of the Wind, a secret song of delight and of love, to the dark depths below. He knew what part he had to play, and while the star sang his noise below.
That’s it, the star redoubled his efforts and sung and sung and sung. The Forest Lark and the Skylark were awakened and came to sing. And then the Wind brought all the jumbling and tomfoolery of the sea with thundering?
What a concert! Never had the dark everlasting spaces heard one before like it.
“We will do our best to sing in the concert, my tiny Rose,” said an Eastern star.
“Yes, indeed,” said the excited troops.
And then about thirty stars rushed down below into close ones by them, and eight others shot in the opposite direction.
Then there sang the Performance Star who was actually in the concert below. Of course he could not come up, or there would have been no performance, but he raised all the other stars to sing still more from below.
Then every star did his best, and the little Rose sat underneath, with her heart full of wonder, and her eyes sifted with enchantment and admiration, and she whispered to the angry little Waterfall, “Never mind, dear, it is a great happiness after all to sing inside one’s heart even when one cannot sing with one’s lips!”
The Night kissed her goodnight with joy, for he was blessed with patience.