“At least,” said Hansel, “I’d like to go home until that half a loaf is gone!”

For a second Grettel looked at her brother as if she really could not think of a suitably severe rebuke.  “Our poor father and mother!” she exclaimed.  “No doubt they thought we should find food in the forest, or that we should encounter travelers who’d have a bite to spare.”

“At any rate,” said Everychild, “it’s no use your searching any more.  You’re looking for the crumbs you dropped, so you’d find the way home.  But I should think you could guess the birds had eaten them all up!”

Hansel turned to Grettel, his eyes more round than ever.  “It must be true!” he exclaimed.

“Where you made your mistake was in not dropping pebbles, the way you did the first time—­though I suppose you couldn’t have got the pebbles, being locked up in your room the night before.  Anyway, it’s no use your trying to go back.  Even if you found the way, the same thing would happen again.  Your father made a great mistake when he agreed to lose you the first time, simply because your mother asked him to.  You know what the book says:  ‘If a man yields once he’s done for.’  You’d much better go along with me.”

Hansel became all curiosity at once.  “Where to?” he asked.

Everychild undertook to reply quite frankly; but all of a sudden he became dumb.  It had seemed to him that he knew very well where he was going.  Even now he felt that the answer ought to be perfectly simple.  Just the same, he could not think of a single word!

Then he heard a voice behind him.  “He has set forth on a quest of Truth!” said the voice.

That was it, of course!  He turned gratefully—­and there was the Masked Lady!  She seemed to be smiling to herself, as if she had thought of something which amused her.  But on the whole her manner was really friendly and serious.

Nevertheless, Everychild was not at all sure that he was glad to see her.  The mask she wore really did give her a very strange appearance.  Still, he faced Hansel with a certain proud bearing.  “That is it,” he said.

And then he turned about again to look at the Masked Lady, for he had noted that there was something strange about her appearance.  She had left her spinning wheel somewhere.  Now she carried the crook of a shepherdess.  One hand rested lightly on the limb of a tree.  And there were sheep not far away.  Some were lying on the grass resting; and some were moving about, their eyes and noses seemingly very much alive—­and their tails.  They wiggled their tails with the greatest energy.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Everychild.

The Masked Lady replied, again with that queer smile about her lips, “I am very often near when you think I am far away.”

And then Everychild perceived another person standing not far from the Masked Lady:  a little man wearing large spectacles and thread-bare clothes.  He was looking at nothing whatever save a note-book which he carried in his hand, and he was scribbling intently.  Occasionally he lifted his hand high and touched the note-book with his pencil, and drew the pencil away with a precise movement.  This was when he was making a period.