"
"A feast!" said Kathleen. "Oh, Mabel, do! You would if you were
as hungry as I am."
"But it won't be real food," urged Mabel.
"It will be real to you, as to us," said Phoebus; "there is no other
realness even in your many-coloured world."
Still Mabel hesitated. Then she looked at Kathleen's legs and
suddenly said: "Very well, I will. But first I'll take off my shoes
and stockings. Marble boots look simply awful especially the
laces. And a marble stocking that's coming down and mine do!"
She had pulled off shoes and stockings and pinafore. "Mabel has
the sense of beauty," said Phoebus approvingly. "Speak the spell,
child, and I will lead you to the ladies of Olympus."
Mabel, trembling a little, spoke it, and there were two little live
statues in the moonlit glade. Tall Phoebus took a hand of each.
"Come run!" he cried. And they ran.
"Oh it is jolly!" Mabel panted. "Look at my white feet in the grass!
I thought it would feel stiff to be a statue, but it doesn't."
"There is no stiffness about the immortals," laughed the Sun-god.
"For tonight you are one of us."
And with that they ran down the slope to the lake.
"Jump!" he cried, and they jumped, and the water splashed up
round three white, gleaming shapes.
"Oh! I can swim!" breathed Kathleen.
"So can I," said Mabel.
"Of course you can," said Phoebus. "Now three times round the
lake, and then make for the island.
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