“I told her about you.  And of course she asked you.  You are my playmate!”

Helma pulled a table to the settle and sat down with all the brown cloth before her, a work-basket, and shears.  But first she measured Eric for his new clothes.

“You may make the leggins, if you want to,” she said to Ivra, “and when you come to a hard place tell me and I will help.  You may even measure them yourself....  We’re the only Forest People, Eric, who wear anything but white in the winter.  Most Forest People like to be the color of their world.  They often laugh at us.  But I like brown.  Ivra makes me think of a brown, blown leaf, and now here will be two of them!  You can blow together all over the forest.”

Eric’s eyes swam in sudden, happy tears, but he only said, “Nora wore red.”

“Oh, she’s not one of us,” laughed Helma.  “But she’s lived close to us so long, she is able to see us.  We aren’t afraid of her.  She’s a good neighbor.”

But why might they be afraid of such a nice old woman, Eric wondered.  He was to learn sometime, and much beside, for this was the beginning of new things for him, and his mother, Helma, and Ivra were strange people.  But how he loved them!

“Now that we are settled at our work, and nothing to interrupt, what shall it be?” asked Helma.  She and Ivra were sewing briskly, one in each corner of the settle.  Eric was stretched on the floor, looking now into the blaze, and now up at the windows where the snow tapped and swirled; for to-day,—­Helma had said,—­was to be a rest day for him.  It was the first rest day he could remember, and how good it was!  To know he could lie there with no cans to sort or label for hours, and no Mrs. Freg to boss him about when work was over!  There were to be no more cans for him forever, and no more Mrs. Freg.  Helma had said that quite firmly.  He believed her and was so happy that he trembled.  And so, it being true that never again should he go back to that unchildlike life that had frightened him so, and tired him so, all the breaths he drew felt like sighs of relief, and he turned his shaggy little head on his arm, crooked under it, and watched Helma’s flying brown fingers with glad eyes.

“What shall it be?” asked Helma.

“Oh, World Stories, please,” said Ivra, drawing her feet up under her as she bent over her sewing.

“Eric probably knows very few of the World Stories,” said Helma.  “So sometime I shall have to go back to the beginning and tell them all over for him.”

“And I’ll stay and hear them over again too!” cried Ivra, dropping her work to clasp her hands.  “I love to hear stories over.”

“Why, better than that, you might tell them yourself.  Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes—­if I can.  Do you suppose I can, mother Helma?  I shall begin at the very beginning, way back before men were in the world at all, or fairies even.  He’d like to hear about the big animals.  And you will listen, mother, to see that I get it all right?”