The Imp’s Saturday

It was Saturday night, but very few children had yet gone to sleep. They all relied on the sleep imp, whose job it was to sing the lullabies, but the imp had not passed by yet. So one mother decided to go and complain about him.

“I'm sorry,” the imp explained, “but tomorrow is a holiday. It is Sunday, and we imps have to clean up the whole world so it looks prettier. You have no idea how many things I still have to do tonight.”

“What things?”

“I have to climb to the tops of the bell towers and polish up the bells, so that they will ring clear and true. I have to go into the fields and check if the wind has dusted clean the grass and the flowers. I have to go up into the sky and bring down the stars one by one and make them bright and shiny.”

“But the stars,” said the woman, “are stuck up in the sky. You can't just take them down and clean them like light bulbs,”

“Are you suggesting I don't know what I'm doing” asked the imp, a bit put out.

However, the little boy had fallen asleep in the meantime, so the mother decided there was no point in staying there any longer to argue about it, so whether or not the stars are really fixed in the sky, we never did find out.