The Bismarck Tribune

ADVENTURE OF THE TWINS
BY OLIVE ROBERTS BARTON
Nancy and Nick and Johnny Jump Up, the fairy, held tightly to the stork's long sharp beak while he carried them away from the tulip field over a lovely country with grass so green it looked like paint in a picture.
And the sky above was so blue and the clouds so big and white and fluffy, they, too, looked like paint.
"Holland looks like a picture doesn't it!" remarked Nancy, looking down as they sailed through the air high above the tree tops.
"Yes," answered the stork. "When I leave my other home in Africa to fly north for the summer, you can't blame me for picking out such a lovely country as Holland. And the people are so kind, too! They always watch for our coming and never throw stones at us, the children don't."
"Oh, look!" cried Nick. "What are those big things with wheels on top?"
"Those are wind-mills," said the stork.
"And what are all those creeks for?" asked Nancy, pointing downward. "They're so straight they look as though they had been drawn with a ruler, and they cross each other like the marks on a checkerboard."
"Those are canals," explained the stork. "Holland is low and very watery. The people dig canals to let the water run away, then their fields are dry enough to farm."
"I see a lot of cows," said Nick next. "There seem to be cows everywhere."
"Of course," answered the stork. "Cows give milk and milk makes cheese. The people of Holland make enough cheese to feed the whole world almost-and still have enough left over for the mice. Those houses yonder are dairies where they make the cheese."
"Say," said Johnny Jump Up admiringly, "you know a lot don't you, Mister Stork? Why, you are better than a geography book."
"Seeing the world is always better than studying a book," said the stork wisely, "and I am a much-traveled person."
"Are we much-traveled persons?" asked Nancy curiously.
"Well," said the stork thoughtfully, "I should say you were. And by the time my friend the titmouse takes you to some more countries you ought to know enough to get into college. Or high school, anyway.
"What's that wall for?" asked Nick, pointing down to a place where the land stopped and the sea began. A high wall ran along the shore as far as they could see.
"We're at the seashore, and that's a dyke," said the stork. "The sea came up and spoiled the land sometimes and the people couldn't make things grow. So they built this dyke many years ago to keep the sea out. You'll never see another one anywhere just like it. But we must go. The titmouse will be waiting for you on the roof to take you home."
And, sure enough, there he was.
"Your tickets said there and back," he remarked, "so we must be returning to the magic garden."
"Goodby," they said to the stork, hopping, all three of them, on the plump little bird's back.
Away they flew over the ocean toward the sunset, leaving Holland and the stork far behind.
(To Be Continued)
(Copyright, 1924, NEA Service, Inc.)