What a wonderful cake it was!  Such food Eric had never dreamed of, and he was a great dreamer!  The frosting was over an inch thick.

Then, of course, Ivra must tell them stories.  All the Forest People loved her stories.  They built a fire to keep from freezing.  The Wind Creatures sat a little way off where it was cool enough for their comfort, but not too far to hear Ivra’s clear voice.  This time she told all she knew about the birthday of this Earth, one of the most magical and splendid and strange of her stories.

But it was the shortest day in the year, Ivra’s birthday, and night fell all too soon.  Then the Tree Girl, who seldom forgot to be sensible, said they had better go home.  The littlest Forest Child was already asleep, curled close by the fire.  They roused him gently.  Good-nights were called and a few minutes after, the shelter was deserted, and the fire out.  And by starlight could be seen many footprints leading away in the white snow out into all parts of the Forest.

Eric and Ivra walked toward home hand in hand.  They had to pass the morning’s slide on the way.  When they came in sight of it they began to walk more quickly and quietly and to look intently.  The blue ice shone bluer than ever in starlight, but more than the ice shone.  Shining people were using the sleds and the hill was covered with them.

“Why, they must be Star People,” Ivra cried excitedly.

When they were quite near they stood to watch.

The strange Star folk were very silent, never calling and laughing as those who had slid there in the morning had done.  Two, a little boy and a young girl, came spinning down on the same sled and stopped so near that Ivra and Eric might have touched them by leaning forward.  But the Star-two must have thought the Forest-two shadows, for they paid no attention to them at all.

Now that they were so near Eric could see that their hair was blue, like the shadows on snow, and their faces a beautiful shining white.  Their straight short garments were blue like shadows, too, and their arms, legs and feet were bare.  But they did not seem conscious of the cold.  Eric did not hear them speak, but they looked at each other as though they were speaking, and then suddenly the little boy laughed merrily, as though the young girl had just told him something very amusing.

Soon the girl turned and ran away up the hill.  But the little boy was as quick as she and threw himself on the sled while she never slackened her pace, but drew him straight and fast up the steep slope.

“I have never seen them before,” Ivra whispered to Eric.  “But mother has told me of them.  They don’t talk as we do you see.  They don’t have to.  They know each other’s thoughts.  They almost never leave their Stars.  Do you think—­perhaps, to-night they saw our slide shining, and wondered so much about it they had to come down?  Even mother has never seen them.  It was Tree Mother told her.”