When the merry game came to an end at last, they gathered around the boulder fireplace.  The twigs were glowing embers now and looked like myriads of golden flower-buds.  Then the Forest Children began clamoring for a World Story.  So Ivra climbed up on the Tree Man’s knee and tipping her head back against his chest, looked into the fire and told one of Helma’s World Stories.  It was the story of a glacier.  That may not sound like a very interesting story to you, but if you could hear Ivra tell it in all its wonder just as Helma had told it to her, you would never ask for a better story.  No, you would ask for that one over and over again, as the Forest Children did the minute she was through.

But instead of telling that one over, Ivra told another, a little story about some eggs and a brood of chickens.  And they wanted that over.  But there must be an end to everything, and so the Tree Girl brought out a bowl of beechnuts, and they forgot the stories, and ate as much as they wanted.  There were apples, too, big and red and cold cheeked.  Everyone was hungry.

When all were satisfied, there was sudden whispering among the guests.  The Bird Fairies fluttered and hummed with excitement.  The Forest Children’s eyes began to shine expectantly.  Ivra, who still sat on the Tree Man’s knee, spoke what they were all thinking.  “The surprise,” she said to the Tree Man.  “You know you promised us a surprise to-night.  Is it time for it yet?”

“Yes,” said the Tree Man.  “It is. High time!  Come, put on your cloaks.  It’s a cold night.”

“But the surprise!” they all cried at once.  “We don’t want to go home until we have had the surprise!”

“Oh, the surprise is up in the branches.  My mother is there with her air-boat, waiting to take you all home.”

The Forest Children clapped their hands and jumped up and down until their sandal-laces that were not already loose and flapping came undone and flapped too.  Wild Star sprang towards the stairs, his face alight, Ivra slipped down from the Tree Man’s knee and ran to Eric.

“The Tree Mother!  The dear, beautiful Tree Mother!  We are to see her and ride with her!” she cried.

Then she dashed away for her cloak.  The Forest Children, with the Tree Girl’s help, were tumbling into theirs, wrong-end-to mostly, ripping off buckles in their hurry.

“The Tree Mother!  The dear Tree Mother!” their little teeth chattered in ecstasy.

When all were ready they crowded up the straight starlit stairs.  At the top they crawled out through the sky door, one by one, into the branches.  Eric followed Ivra, and saw a great black moth-like thing poised in air by the tree’s top.  But it was hollowed like a boat and a shadowy woman was standing upright in it.  A dark cloak covered her, but the hood had fallen back, and her face in the starlight was very beautiful and very young, younger even than Helma’s, whose face Eric had thought all that day too young and glad to be a mother’s.  How could this be the Tree Man’s mother, he wondered,—­the Tree Girl’s grandmother!  Then he saw that her hair was white, whiter than all the snow that lay in the forest.