fact in mind. But here it's very different. Our rules are made to
break. Don't you hear the Plynck breaking them?"

So that was what she was doing! For the first time, Sara understood
why she had so enjoyed the delightful little snapping sounds, which
made her think of corn dancing against the lid of a corn-popper--or of
the snapping of little dry twigs under the pointed shoes of a brownie,
slipping through the woods alone on Christmas Eve. She thought it was
the most completely satisfying sound she had ever heard. She thought,
too, that the broken rules under the tree made a charming litter, and
wished that the Gunki who were raking them up would leave them there
instead. But they went on piling them into wheelbarrows and trundling
them down the road toward the smithy.

"They are taking them to be mended," said the Echo of the Plynck, who
had been watching her. "We believe in conservation, you see. Schlorge
mends them one day, and she breaks them the next, and so we usually
have plenty."

Sara was charmed. But as she stood gazing at the Plynck she remembered
what she had heard her say as she came in. "Will--will she fly?" she
whispered to the Echo.

"Well, I don't know," said the Echo of the Plynck. "There's a rule
that she must, and so it's quite an effort. And there's a rule that
she must not sit on that particular branch of the Gugollaph-tree. So
of course she usually sits there. You wouldn't think, yourself, that
she'd want to sit there, day after day, if there wasn't--would you?"

Sara was speechless; she was wondering why anything that seemed so