BARN-DOOR INN.

We were tired of travel one afternoon, And stopped at the sign of “The Great Barn-Door,” And Jimmy and Alice took rooms in the loft, While I had mine on the second floor. Jimmy and Alice went climbing high Over the rafters above my head, And peeped thro’ the swallow-holes out at the sky. —If Mother had seen them, what would she have said? But I stayed down in the soft new hay, And the sun crept in thro’ a yellow chink, And a long beam found me out where I lay, And tickled my eyes till it made them blink. The dust-motes circled and whirled and danced, And my pillow was soft and warm and deep, And the hay smelled sweet, and it somehow chanced That there in the mow I fell asleep. And I dreamed a dream full of swallows’ wings, And elfish motes in the dusty air, And thousands of other wonderful things; Till Jimmy and Alice found me there.

We’re traveling hard and fast to-day,— Jimmy and Alice and me— Bowling along on the Shining Way, With a royal coach and three. We laugh at the folk who are passing by, Dragging their weary feet Deep in the dust that our whizzing wheels Have raised in the flying street. Fields and forests flit out of sight; And if all goes just as we planned We’ll travel on till we reach the bars At the entrance to Fairy Land. And what is the coach on our lordly quest? And where are the foaming three? Why, the coach is the dump-cart, and the rest— Just Jimmy and Alice and me.