And this time she did remember her dimples; she saw them sparkling on the whipped cream cushion, all safe and contented, before she so much as lifted her eyes from the blue plush grass.  But alas, for her resolution not to loiter!  For although, on the other days, there had been such a variegated murmur of delighted sound—­the Echo of the Plynck in the pool, and the lovely crackling of breaking rules, and the deep-blue singing of the Zizzes’ wings, and the melodious snoring of the Snoodle (like that of a tuning-fork when it sleeps on its side) —­yet everything had been as still and motionless to the eye as an April daydream.  But this morning it was the other way around.  Not a sound was to be heard; but what a scene!  You see, for the first time, the Snoodle was awake, frisking soundlessly around the fountain; and the Plynck—­the Plynck was flying!

Now, it is true that a Plynck at rest is a beautiful sight; but it is nothing to the charm and wonder of a Plynck in motion. (The same, as we shall see in a moment, is true in a lesser degree of a Snoodle.) Its long, rosy plumes, like those of an ostrich, only four times as long, went waving through the air with an indescribably dreamy grace; and now Sara could actually see the perfume, which before she had only smelled.  It rained down through the air, as the Plynck circled slowly round and round the fountain, and looked rather like a sort of golden spice.  And as Sara stood watching, spellbound and sniffing, she knew she had been mistaken in thinking that, there was no sound at all.  There was just one:  a little soft, straining sound the Plynck’s cerulean Echo made as it circled round and round in the pool and tried to keep up with the Plynck.  Her motions would have been exactly as lovely as those of the Plynck, if they had not been just a trifle labored, owing to the difficulty of flying under water; and her breathing was distinctly perceptible.  Sara could hear it, too; and it sounded like the ghost of a dead breeze in a pine-top.

As soon as Sara could take her ravished eyes from the sight, she looked down to see what was nuzzling about her shoe-buttons; and, just as she had suspected, it was the Snoodle, frisking and tumbling and rolling about her feet to make her notice him.  And, indeed, when he was awake, the Snoodle was irresistible.  Not that he looked like anything Sara had ever seen before.  He might, perhaps, have looked like a dog, except that he was so very long—­his length, indeed, gave him a haunting resemblance to a freshly cooked piece of macaroni.  (Sara was later to find out the reason for this; but at the moment she was puzzled, just as you are when you meet a stranger who looks like somebody else, and you can’t remember who else it is.) And his head, which was not very clearly defined, was finished off with a neat little cap that looked like a snail-shell, and seemed to be fastened to him.  His eyes, which stuck out several inches in front of his face on long prongs,