Part 1

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STAR PEOPLE

BY

KATHARINE FAY DEWEY

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANCES B. COMSTOCK

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY =The Riverside Press Cambridge= 1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY KATHARINE FAY DEWEY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published October 1910_

TO THREE LITTLE KATHARINES

_Oh, Katharines three, Come sail with me Where the ship of my Fancy flies! We’ll wander free Over land and sea, Then sail away to the skies._

_If I were a star, So far—so far— From this Earth where the children dwell, My twinkliest beam For that ship should gleam; And my truest secret I’d tell To the eyes that look Through fancy.—No book Nor telescope serves so well._

CONTENTS

I. THE PRINCESS AND THE OTHERS 1

_Introduces some people in Garden and Sky. Meet them now if you like, or come back by and by._

II. THE SAILOR’S STAR 11

_Tells how the Jane Ellen sailed far o’er the sea; Found a rock, built a ladder, and pleased Little B._

III. THE COMET AND THE POLE STAR 42

_On the sands of the seashore you learn what befell A bad little Comet.—Oh, it punished him well!_

IV. OLD SOL’S MENAGERIE 65

_The cages are safe, though you can’t see the bars; The Zodiac Circus,—Performers all Stars!_

V. MAJOR 80

_Here comes a great Wagon. Ahoy! Who goes there? Did some one say, “Dipper”? Why!—’tis you, Mr. Bear!_

VI. THE BEE BABY 98

_Were I seeking a spot that was safe for a babe, or To build me a cot, and would not lose my labor, I would not choose Xyntli, myself, for a neighbor!_

VII. LADY MOON’S LANTERN 127

_Rise, rise, Lady Moon! Soar high,—sail over!— Where is Bee Baby now? Shall I discover?_

VIII. ANDROMEDA’S BIRTHDAY 133

_Meteors are ripe! A touch makes them fly. I suspect there’ll be doings to-night in the Sky._

IX. A SURPRISE PARTY 149

_It was all Little Bear: (though they all said they all knew it!) But for him they’d have paid no attention at all to it._

X. TRAVELERS’ TALES 171

_Tip-top o’ the hill!—There’s the fit starting-place For a highflier journey through direful Space!_

XI. TORQUILLON’S LAIR 192

_His spirit was selfish, his ways impolite. Hey! Ships and Star People! Ye made a brave fight!_

EPILOGUE 230

ILLUSTRATIONS

Star People and the Jane Ellen _Frontispiece_

They watched with her 4

Tom Green’s Chanty 26

Everybody watched him go up and up 30

“Oh, dear Taffy, let _me_ take care of the Sailor’s Star” 38

Draco 46

A more rascally comet you wouldn’t care to see 50

Orion 56

Orion’s Dogs and Little Bear 64

“Shall we not walk together, sir?” 70

Cassiopeia 76

“Why, I thought you were a wagon,” he said, “but where are your hortheth?” 86

Andromeda 98

They thought only of their flight 116

His wondering eyes looked from Lady Moon’s shoulder 124

The small round shadow passed on across the bright lantern of the moon 130

Three Orions couldn’t have stopped them 146

Little Bear stopped by the bush 154

He found Merope sitting alone 180

The sisters were dancing—the very prettiest and most twirly of the “Sailor’s Knots” 190

Down the channel he came flying 210

Standing lightly on the yards, high, high in the air, the twin brothers Castor and Pollux 216

STAR PEOPLE

I THE PRINCESS AND THE OTHERS

So they came to the place where the Princess was. And when they looked down there were treetops—

But that is not a proper beginning when nobody knows who they were or anything about it.

There were four of them,—the Princess and three Others.

What the Princess’s name was isn’t to be told, and she was not a real princess. But that made no difference to the Others. She was the most wonderful person they knew, and everything a princess should be, and they loved her loyally.

The Others were called Prudence, Pat, and the Kitten; but the true name of each one of them was the true name of the Princess,—that isn’t to be told and doesn’t matter.

Prudence was the oldest, and very wise. (That was why she was Prudence, but more often the Princess said, “Miss Phyllis-y.”) She had brown eyes, clear and steady, and short hair. There was a perky little lock on one side of the middle of her forehead that reminded the Princess of a question mark. She was small and looked years younger than she was, and that made her funny when she was so sagacious.

Pat was the tallest and the most impatient. (So they called her “Patience”—because she wasn’t!—and shortened it to Pat.) She talked with her eyebrows; and sometimes they would fairly frighten you if you didn’t know she couldn’t do it! Her hair was braided and tied tight, but usually a good deal of it escaped and ruffled before it reached the braids. She was over nine and Miss Phyllisy was not far from twelve, and they considered the Kitten extremely young,—which the Kitten didn’t deny. She was young, and she had other kitten-tricks,—like coming and sitting on a person’s knee without being invited when she wanted to, and other times being very independent and going her own ways; and she made soft little songs for herself,—that didn’t begin or end any more than a real kitten’s,—and purring sounds instead of talking when she was pleased. But she could talk faster than countless kittens when there was any occasion for it.

That is who they were. And any one can fancy how they were frisking about in the garden and out,—and the nearer it grew to bedtime, the farther they kept from the house; and how they trailed up the crooked path on the side of the hill,—the Kitten following along, making a song for herself,—and finally came to the farthest, high, wild lookout place, with a railing at the edge overlooking the dark treetops. And there they found the Princess watching pale little stars coming out in the light sky.

The Kitten didn’t come close until she was ready, and then she immediately cuddled up, sleepy; but the Others went straight to the Princess. She put her arm around them and they leaned against her, but they didn’t talk, they watched with her. And more stars came out where they looked steadily, and others came where they didn’t look, more than they could count, all silent, to look back at them. And the Princess was smiling to herself.—

But that didn’t suit Pat very long, it made her uneasy. First she puckered her eyebrows, but nobody saw her; then she sighed, but nobody noticed; then she spoke,—“What _are_ you looking at?”

The Princess still looked, but she squeezed with her arm. “Some people I know. Friends of a friend of mine.”

Pat didn’t understand, so she grew wary (that was one of her ways). She twitched her shoulder, but she wouldn’t be the next to speak—unless it were too long!

“What people, Dearie?” asked Prudence, when they had waited a minute and the Princess didn’t speak again.

“Most illustrious, highly exalted. A king and a queen, a royal dragon, and an indispensable little bear—wonderfolk,” ended the Princess, as if that explained it.

“You’re looking at the stars,” said Pat-who-would-n’t-be-imposed-upon.

“Star People, Pat. Can you guess now?”

“I think I can, Dearie. But you tell,” said Prudence.

The Princess took her arm away so she could point with it, and she put her head down beside a dreadfully scowling little girl’s, so they could look along and off the end of the same finger. It pointed where five stars made a zigzag in the sky. She pointed to one after another.

“Look like a ‘W,’ don’t they, Pat?—But there’s another star—very pale—and another off here. Now, see—tipped up—so—Isn’t that a pretty good chair? How would you like to sit there and overlook things?”

“Cassiopeia wouldn’t let her,” said Prudence. “That’s Cassiopeia’s Chair, Pat. She doesn’t allow any one to sit in it.”

“I don’t want to.” Pat spoke in a loud whisper.

“That is where you’re mistaken, Miss Phyllisy,” said the Princess. “She wouldn’t mind a bit. But she is sitting there herself, this minute.”

“Really, Princess? I didn’t know that!”

“Did you ever see her out of it?” (Miss Phyllisy giggled.) “There is one of the stars on her most loftical head. Do you see it?”

“Who said it was that?” asked Pat. Her manner was a trifle threatening, but she was ready to be friends.

“Said what?”

“Cas—what you called it. Why did you call it that?”

“Cassiopeia’s Chair? That is what it was named long and long ago.”

“Long as Ancients?” (The Princess knew all about the Ancients,—several kinds of them. She knew everything.)

“Long as that,” she answered. “They’re the very ones who named the Star People for us, saw the figures in the stars, and gave them the names of their own gods and heroes, animals,—all sorts of queer things. Useful lives they led, those Star People, ever after.”

“How were they useful?” asked Phyllisy.

“To the sailors, Beloveds, most of all, or any one who wants to find his way where there’s nothing on Earth to guide him. In the middle of the most vastest ocean or the most widest plain, all they have to do is to look up and see where the Star People are; then they’ll know where they are themselves, and where to go to be somewhere else. Of course the Star People can’t help any one who doesn’t know them,” she added.

“We don’t. We could be lost any time,” said Pat.

“You might have been once, but not after this. There’s a whole Royal Family right before your eyes now: Queen Cassiopeia on her throne and King Cepheus beside her and their pretty daughter, Andromeda.—That is one of Cepheus’ stars—and there’s another.” The Princess drew lines with her finger from the stars of the big “W” to the ones they wanted to find. And the Others picked them out, passing from star to star like crossing a brook, jumping from stone to stone. There were different colors, too, to help them. The Princess saw them plainly,—red stars and blue and yellow, and never before had the Others seen anything but all alike and plain shining. At first they believed it only because the Princess said so; then they began to see it themselves, but it was still too light to see very well. And they found a few stars of Andromeda.

“There is a beautiful young hero who belongs with them,” said the Princess. “He’s down below the treetops now; he will come up later. He is Perseus,—the Rescuer. He helped the Cassiopeia family out of terrible trouble when they were all Earth People.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Phyllisy. “Perseus-and-the-Gorgon?”

“No less. A friend of yours, Miss Phyllisy?”

Miss Phyllisy nodded, and Pat twisted her eyebrow.

“Well,—she’s eleven and nine months, and I’m only nine and seven months,” she said, just as if she were arguing something.

“I only happened to, Pat,” said Phyllisy.

“She’ll tell you some time; then you’ll know him too,” said the Princess. “I want to show you somebody splendid. Tip your heads up. Do you see four stars that make a long diamond,—three brighter and one not so bright at the point? That’s Draco’s head,—the great Dragon. See his spiky wings lifted. His tail comes down this way. Look,—a curl,—so.” She swung her finger around. “Isn’t he fine? Keep your eye right on him and I’ll tell you who he is. He isn’t one of your common, everyday dragons you meet so often.—Is your eye on him, Pat?”

Pat tipped her head up, then she tipped it down and nodded. The Princess squeezed the young Other One, who was sleepy, in the hollow of her arm, and began in a story-telling voice: “There was once a young man named Jason, who had a great many adventures. One of them was when he set out to bring home the fleece of a ram. (A ram is a grown-up lamb, Kitten.” The Kitten made a funny little bleating noise, like a mother-cat; but she was only partly awake.) “And this was a golden fleece. And it hung on a tree all-by-alone, where any one might have stolen it,—ONLY, it was guarded by a great dragon that lay curly at the foot of the tree, and never closed his eyes, watching it. And that was the very identical Dragon you’re looking at this minute.”

“Tell us what happened then, Dearie,—when he didn’t close his eyes,” urged Phyllisy, after they had looked again at the Dragon.

“He _did_!” the Princess closed the words off—snap!—so they were tight shut,—and the Others giggled. “Jason gave him some magic drops that put him to sleep, and carried off the fleece.”

“What did they do to the Dragon when they found the fleece was gone?”

“I wasn’t exactly there, Phyllisy; but you may judge by this, they made him a Star Person to reward him because he was a good reliable dragon until he met a Bewitchment that he couldn’t help.—And he’s very happy there in the Sky, half surrounding the indispensable Little Bear who carries the Sailor’s Star on the tip of his tail. He’s still guarding something very precious, you see.”

“You haven’t told us about the indispensable little bear,” said Phyllisy.

“Tell about little bear,” the Kitten murmured.

“Tell us,” said Pat, coaxing the Princess’s hand up and down.

The Princess didn’t answer at once. She was looking up into the twinkly blue—very far away—as if she were forgetting the Others. At last she spoke: “Little Bear is a very special friend and friend’s friend. I’d rather tell you about him another time,—when he isn’t listening.”

“Can he hear?” Pat whispered it.

“Surely,—and carry messages.”

“Will he do it?”

“He did,—brought me one and took one.”

“Oh-h,—what did he say?”

The Princess laid her fingers on her lips.

“Is it secrets?” asked Phyllisy.

“Long secrets.” Her voice smiled in the dusk. “But I’ll tell you the Word of it,—‘Faithful.’”

The Sky was dark and deep and crowded with stars. They sat very still and mysterious while a wind came out of Beyond. They could hear it turning back the leaves in the treetops,—saying, “H—ss-sh—” as it passed through, and all the stars winked.—

“Wake up, Kitten!” said the Princess.

But she didn’t have to wake up entirely, for the Princess held her hand coming back, down the rocky steps and along the paths, and her feet walked themselves.

II THE SAILOR’S STAR

Quite suddenly the Princess was there, at the head of the path where four steps came down the terrace,—all silken and wonderful and growing up into a rose at the top, that wasn’t a rose but a hat!

The Others dropped everything and ran, and she waited until they got there and hung on her arms. And they walked around her to look at it in the back.

“What kind of a party was it?” asked Pat.

“They were married and lived happy ever after, and there were bridesmaids all in a row,” said the Princess. “So there wasn’t any more to _that_;—and if anybody wanted me to tell them about how the Pole Star happened, I should say this was the most suitable time.”

“It is for us, very convenient,” said Miss Phyllisy. “We’ll come this minute.”

They waited while the Princess gathered up her skirt where it trailed,—soft outside, but fluffy under,—and threw it over her arm, to start fair: One, two, three, and away!

The Kitten won, because she truly ran very fast and she looked straight ahead, but Pat wanted to see behind at the same time, to know if the others were gaining.

By the Shadow Pool, they two watched the Princess with Prudence beside her—very companionable—walking the last bit of it—across the little bridge below, then turning up the dark path on the edge of the ravine, with trees arching over from the hillside. Looking out the other way through a gap in the trees, they could see—like a picture in a frame—the steps coming down the terrace and the path curving down by the petunias, all in the sun, then dropping away out of sight into the trees that it came out of to cross the bridge.

In here it was cool and deep shade, in tall woods on the steep hillsides that opened out like a “V.” There were rocks with maidenhair and moss in the banks behind; and in the point of the “V”—higher than any one could reach—a thin waterfall came over the edge of the rock, and fell a little way, and slid the rest into the still pool with goldfish in it, and others that were the same color as shadows in water and scarcely showed unless they darted across. The water went on over another edge that was made for it, and ran away at the bottom of the ravine,—hunting for the sea; but the fishes lived there for always. There were seats around the pool in convenient places where a tree or a rock made part of it and twisted wood the rest. But there was one broad seat with a high twisted back against the rocks behind, and a long flat rock before it for a footstool, that was stately for the Princess.

She pulled out long pins,—curious ones, carved at the top,—and the hat that wasn’t a rose, but grew up as if it were part of her, came off and left her altogether finished without it, with coils on top.

And because the Princess was willing, Miss Phyllisy put it on her own head. The Shadow Pool was a mirror, so she could see if it looked as if it were growing there, and Pat looked with her. But Pat looked also at the back of Miss Phyllisy’s head. “It ought to be more hair—done up,” she said. Phyllisy twisted her head to see in the pool, and she put up her hand and felt down her hair behind; it ended in a point in the middle of her neck,—the locks crossing in from the sides,—like a very small duck’s tail, about an inch. The Kitten slipped her finger under and turned up the lock, and it curved around the finger.

So Phyllisy took the hat off and they put it carefully where it wouldn’t fall, and “would be all right, Dearie,”—and they settled down in their most usual places: Phyllisy, where she could look into the pool from across and see the Princess upside down; Pat, in the narrow seat in the crotch between two trees,—but she would move to another pretty soon, because she always did,—and the Kitten, sitting on her foot in the seat next largest to the Princess’s.

“It is about the last, youngest Star Person of all; and how there came to be the Pole Star,” said the Princess.

“We’ve told the Kitten what she didn’t hear, all she could understand;—so you won’t have to plan about that,” said Prudence.

“I could understand before,” said the Kitten. “I heard, too,—myself.”

“Oh, Dearie,”—Prudence had “Dearies” to spare for others beside the Princess,—“you were asleep, and you couldn’t be expected to understand it all; you’re such a little girl—under seven.”

“I’m going to tell it most particularly to you, Kitten. Now, see if you don’t,” said the Princess.

She leaned a little forward on the stately seat, her elbow on her knee, and the silken folds fallen down on the broad stone. She looked for a long moment, her eyes shining straight out. And then she began:—

“Once upon a time, so long ago that nobody can remember when, a beautiful ship was sailing along under a spanking breeze with all sails set. The name of the ship was the Jane Ellen, and she was named for the Captain’s wife. At her prow was the figure of a mermaid, with long waving hair; and the head of the mermaid was like the head of the Captain’s wife. But that was when she was young. Now she sat at home and knit; but to the Captain she looked just like the lovely mermaid, and he kept the Jane Ellen spick and span from truck to keel,—the finest ship afloat, as she was the best of wives.”

(No one could tell stories as the Princess told them. The things she told she knew so well, it was as if she were seeing them, and words were waiting for her and came orderly, just as she needed them to make it plain.)

“Now, as the ship was sailing along on this fine starlight night, and everything favorable, the Captain in his cabin felt a great jolt, then a s-scrape, and the ship leaned away over, and everything that could slid down to one side. The next minute it tilted the other way, and most of them slid back again, and then the ship went on as before.

“The Captain jumped up and put his head out of the cabin window and looked fore and aft along the deck. He saw a man coming toward him, and called, very sharply, ‘Mr. Morganwg!’[1]

Footnote 1:

He called it “Morgan-_ough_,” but he was particular about the spelling.

“It was the Mate of the Jane Ellen. He was young and big, and he had gray eyes and black hair and heavy black eyebrows that almost met over his eyes, and he could look very stern, but his eyes laughed; and he could sing, and if he had had time, he could have played on a harp, because he was a Welshman, and his name was Taffy. But he didn’t have time, because if you are mate of a ship like the Jane Ellen, you have a great deal to do, and have to be everywhere at once, to see that things are done as the Captain wants them.

“‘What was that?’ asked the Captain.

“‘We struck on Porpoise Rock, sir,’ said Taffy.

“‘Who’s steering?’

“‘Nelson.’

“‘Well?—he knew the rock was there, didn’t he? It’s marked on his chart plain enough. There’s no excuse, a bright starlight night like this.’

“‘Yes, he knew it,’ said the Mate, ‘but he says he didn’t make enough allowance for the stars moving. He says if there were _one_ star, only, that he could depend on to be in the same place every night, it would be all right.’

“‘Well, there isn’t,’ said the Captain.

“‘I know it,’ answered the Mate. ‘But you know yourself, it’s confusing to steer by them.’ Taffy spoke quite respectfully, but he often made suggestions to the Captain when no one was listening, and the Captain loved him like his own son.”

“Do they move?” asked Pat.

“Yes,” said Phyllisy. “Don’t you know?—rise and set.”

Pat looked at the Princess to see if that was what she meant, and she nodded, and went on:—

“‘H’m!’ said the Captain. ‘You go and drop anchor right now. I won’t have any more paint scraped off from this ship. Then you come here and we’ll talk it over. Something’s got to be done.’