On that special night, which somehow I remember with tenderness, I sometimes think now—all these years after—that I should like to have been with those solitary, sleepy little figures, trying so hard to get near to mystery. I should think that a Star Story must have come in anybody’s head to tell them. Like this:—  
Once, when it didn’t matter to anybody whether you were late or early, or quick or slow, not only because there wasn’t anybody and there wasn’t any you, but because it was back in the beginning when there were no lates and earlies and quicks and slows, then things began to happen in the middle of the Great Black Hush which was all there was to everything.
 
The Great Black Hush reached all the way around the Universe and in directions without any names, and it was huge and humble and316 superior and helpless and mighty and in other ways it was very much indeed like a man. And as there was nothing to do, the Great Black Hush was bored past extinction and almost to creation. For there wasn’t anything else about save only the Wind, and the Wind would have nothing whatever to do with him and always blew right by.
 
Now, inasmuch as everything that is now was then going to be created, it was all waiting somewhere to be created; and nothing is clearer than that. Lines and colours and musics and tops and blocks and flame and Noah’s arks and mechanical toys and mountains and paints and planets and air and water and alphabets and jumping-jacks, all, all, were waiting to be created, and among them waited people. I cannot tell you where they waited, because there was no where; but they were waiting, as anybody can see, for time to be begun.
 
Among the people who were waiting about was one special baby, who was just big enough to reach out after everything and to try to put it in his mouth, and they had an awful time with him. He put his little hands on coloured things and on flame things and on air and on water and on musics, and he wanted to know what they all were, and he tried to put them in his mouth. And his mother was perfectly distracted, and she told him so, openly.
 
 
“To see what running away is really like.”
317 “Special Baby,” she said to him openly, “I don’t see why every hair in my head is not pure white. And if you don’t stop making so much trouble, I’ll run away.”
 
“Run away,” thought the Special Baby. “Now what thing is that?”
 
And he stretched out his little hand to see, but there wasn’t anything there, and he couldn’t put it in his mouth; so without letting anybody know, he started off all by himself to see what running away is really like.
 
He ran and he ran, past lines and colours and blocks and flame and music and paint and planets, all waiting about to begin, till he began to notice the Great Black Hush, where it lay all humble and important, and bored past extinction and almost to creation.
 
“What thing is that?” thought the Special Baby, and put out his little hand to get it and put it in his mouth.
 
So he touched the Great Black Hush, and under the little hand the Great Black Hush felt as318 never he had felt before. For the Special Baby’s hand was soft and wandering and most clinging—any General Baby’s hand will give you the idea if you care to try. And it made it seem as if there were something to do.
 
All through his huge, helpless, superior, and mighty being the Great Black Hush was stirred, and when the Special Baby was frightened and would have gone back, the Great Black Hush did the most astonishing things to try to keep him. He plaited the darkness up like a ruffle and waved it like a flag and opened it like a flower and shut it like a door and poured it about like water, all to keep the Special Baby amused. But though the Special Baby tried to put most of these and all the dark in his mouth, still on the whole he was badly frightened and wanted his mother, and he began to cry to show how much he wanted her. And then the Great Black Hush was at his wits’ end.
 
“Now, who is there to be the mother of this Special Baby?” he cried in despair, for there wasn’t anything else anywhere around, save only the Wind, and the Wind always blew right by. But the blowing by must have been because the Great Black Hush had never spoken before,319 for these were the first words that ever he had said; and the Wind, on hearing them, stopped still as a stone, and listened.
 
“Would I do?” the Wind asked, and the Great Black Hush was so astonished that he almost dropped the Special Baby.
 
“Would I do?” asked the Wind again, and made the dark like blown garments and like long, blown hair and tender motions, such as women make. And she took the Special Baby in her arms and rocked him as gently as boughs, so that he laughed with delight and tried to put the wind in his mouth and finally went to sleep, with his beads on.
 
“Now what’ll we do?” said the Great Black Hush, hanging about, all helpless and mighty.
 
“We can get along without a cradle,” said the Wind, “because I will rock him to sleep in my arms.” (This was before time began and before they laid them down to go to sleep alone in a dark room.) “But we ought, we ought,” she added, “to have something for him to play with when he wakes up.” (This was before time began and before anybody ate. But they always played. That came first.)
 
“If he had something to play with, what would320 that look like?” asked the Great Black Hush, all helpless.
 
“It musn’t have points like scissors, or ends like string, and the paint mustn’t come off. I think,” said the Wind, “it ought to look like a shining ball.”
 
“By my distance,” said the Great Black Hush, all mighty, “that’s what it shall look like.”
 
Then he began to make a plaything, and he worked all over him and all over everywhere at the fashioning. I don’t know how he did it, because I wasn’t there, and I can’t reckon how long it took him, because there wasn’t any time, but I know some things about it all, and one is that he finally got it done.
 
“Look!” the Great Black Hush cried to the Wind,—for she paid more attention to the Special Baby now than she did to him. And when she looked, there hung in the sky, a great, enormous, shining ball.
 
“That’s big enough so he can’t get it in his mouth,” she said approvingly. “It’s really ginginatic.”
 
“You mean gigantic, dear,” said the Great Black Hush, all superior. But the Wind didn’t care because words hadn’t been used long enough321 to fit closely, and besides he had said “dear” and she knew what that meant. “Dear” came before “gigantic.”
 
“Now wake him up,” said the Great Black Hush, “to play with it.”
 
But this the Wind would by no means do. She said the Special Baby must have his sleep out or he’d be cross. And the Great Black Hush wondered however she knew that, and he went away, all humble, and amused himself making more playthings till the baby woke up. And all the playthings looked like shining balls, because that was the only kind of plaything the Wind had told him to make and he didn’t know whether anything else would do. So he made them by the thousands and started them ............