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sky was full of stars.
The little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite
gladness. He stood for a time like one awe-stricken, and then,
with a queer small cry and holding out his arms, he ran out as if
he would embrace at once the whole warm round immensity of the
world. He did not follow the neat set paths that cut the garden
squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall,
scented herbs, through the night stock and the nicotine and the
clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets
of southern-wood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of
mignonette. He came to the great hedge and he thrust his way
through it, and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply
and tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burs and
goosegrass and havers caught and clung to him, he did not care. He
did not care, for he knew it was all part of the wearing for which
he had longed. "I am glad I put on my suit," he said; "I am glad
I wore my suit."
Beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what
was the duck-pond by day. But by night it was a great bowl of
silver moonshine all noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver
moonshine twisted and clotted with strange patternings, and the
little man ran down into its waters between the thin black rushes,
knee-deep and waist-deep and to his shoulders, smiting the water to
black and shining wavelets with either hand, swaying and shivering
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