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36 MOONFOLK.
Shoe, "did you over try to teach your grandmother
to suck "
eggs
?
"No, ma'am," replied Ehoda, remembering the
switch she had seen in the shoe.
" Then, don't you ever do it, my dear," said Mother
Broomster good-humoredly.
" As for those being clouds,
isn't it likely that I should know what they are, better
than you, when I have been all
my life sweeping them
down for cobwebs, and you never went near them
"
?
Rhoda did not venture any reply to this question.
The blanket being now spread, the old woman tucked
her sleeves a little higher, felt of the handkerchief upon
her head, grasped the broom in both hands, and laid
herself down upon the blanket.
"
Now then," said the Old Woman who lived in the
Shoe, seizing one corner of the blanket the Old "Woman
;
who lived under the Hill took another, Mother Whatd'ye-think
the third, and Mother Banbury the fourth ;
while Margery Daw behind the bushes spread her
shawl upon the ground, and pretended to do all that
Mother Banbury really did.
" " Now, then ! cried all the old women together ;
and
raising the blanket from the ground, they began shaking
it, at first with a gentle, regular motion, then harder and
harder and harder, until with one great shake they sent
Mother Broomster flying out of it
away up toward the
stars.
" She's going seventy times as high as the moon,"