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10
The House Without Windows

their bellies Eepersip saw a streak of silver. At last, when she got to the top, she saw that on one side it was a vast daisied slope, down, down; and on another it was wooded to the foot. From where she stood, range after range spread out before her, lake after lake beneath her, with the crimson of the now setting sun gloriously reflected in them. It was like fairyland. And when Eepersip turned southward, she beheld the almighty ocean with the exquisite sunset colours reflected in it as in the lakes. That night she slept on a soft bed of moss in a hollow down near the pool.

The next morning, after she had made a good breakfast on the juicy root of a plant which she found, she lay down by the pool and gazed at the sky, the way she had done on the second day of her wildness. And as she lay there it grew so quiet that a chipmunk stole out of a tiny hole that he had dug between the roots of a tree. He came to her, sniffed at a cracker she was munching, and tickled her cheek with his nose; whereupon she cautiously put out her hand with a piece of the cracker on it. The chipmunk was frightened and ran away. But the piece of cracker looked very tempting, and before long he lost his fear and ventured close again. Step by step he crept along, until, with a frightened squeal, he seized the piece and disappeared. Eepersip