Part 4

Then there was indeed an outcry. All the people in the book began speaking at once. Just at that moment--before the beginning of the first chapter--they were all able to say what they chose.

"Make her stand up!" cried one.

"I never heard such nonsense!" said another.

"Why can't she behave as we do?" asked a third angrily.

"The idea of wanting a change!"

"She'll have to behave like other people in the end."

"So discontented!"

"So very odd!"

So they went on, while Christabel still sat calmly, with her arms crossed.

"I'm not going to begin all over again," she repeated firmly.

"But that poor boy is waiting to begin the book," said some one; "and we can't go on while you are behaving in this silly way."

"I can't help that," said Christabel; "I'm tired of saying things I don't a bit mean."

Before she knew what was going to happen Christabel found herself in the middle of a terrible turmoil. All the people in the book seemed to be rushing at her.

Far away she heard a voice saying--

"There's something very queer about this book. It seems all in a muddle, somehow!"

Then there was silence, and Christabel realized that the people in the book had turned her out! She was no longer a little girl in a book, but a little girl in real life. She looked round and saw her Big Sister, still writing.

"I don't want to be in a book any more," said Christabel. "Real life is nicer. In real life one can at least say what one thinks one's self, instead of always saying what other people think."

"Don't be too sure of that," said her Big Sister.

_THE FAIRY WHO WAS LOOKING FOR A HOME_

Little Fairy Flitterwing had no home. Whenever he settled down in a place something happened to turn him out. If he found a comfortable rosebud some one would come and pick it, and then it died and he was homeless again. If he chose a pink-edged daisy to live in, the gardener would mow the lawn at once. He grew very tired of wandering about the garden, and he determined at last to go out into the world in search of a home.

It was quite a small garden, in the middle of a town. Flitterwing felt rather afraid of venturing into the streets, because he knew there would not be many fairies there, and not many nice places for a fairy to live in. So he was a little sad and anxious as he flew over the high brick wall of the garden and looked about him. He found himself in a queer little yard, not nearly as nice as the garden, with a pavement of round stones and an ugly brick house at one end of it. There never was a more unlikely place for a fairy to find a comfortable home. Flitterwing was on the point of flying back again over the garden wall, when he caught sight of something green at the further end of the courtyard. Some grass had grown up among the stones.

"The very place for me!" said Flitterwing to himself. "No one is likely to disturb me here, and I can fly across to the garden whenever I feel lonely."

So he found a cosy corner between two stones, where the grass was thick and soft, and there he made up his mind to stay. It was not, of course, the very best kind of place for a fairy, but, after all, it was quiet and near his friends, and he was terribly tired of moving about from rose to rose and from daisy to daisy. So he thought he would make the best of it.

Very soon he felt quite at home in the grass-patch at the end of the yard. Every morning, of course, he had to attend to the grass and see that it was always fresh and green, for it is the business of every fairy to take care of the place he lives in. He does it instead of paying rent. Then, after polishing his wings nicely and making them shine like opals, he would fly across the brick wall and have a chat with the grass-fairies and flower-fairies in the garden.

His life went on in this quiet and comfortable way for some time.

But one morning poor Flitterwing received a great shock. He was very busy cleaning the grass with a dewdrop, and thinking how strong and tall the blades had grown since he first began to take care of them. They were a good deal taller than himself now, and he was not able to see over them. So, when he heard a heavy footstep clattering across the yard, he peered between the blades of grass to see who was coming.

"Oh dear, oh dear," he cried, "here's that dreadful gardener! I'm sure he's going to turn me out!"

He quickly dropped the crumpled cobweb soaked in dewdrop with which he was rubbing the green blades, and folding his wings closely round him he hid himself in the grass, and waited to see what was going to happen.

The gardener was carrying a basket in one hand, and in the other a tool with dreadful prongs. He was going to pull up the grass that had grown among the stones! Poor Flitterwing's nice new home was going to be spoilt!

One by one the tufts were dragged up by the roots, while the sharp prongs clinked against the stones and the gardener's fingers crumpled up the blades of grass that had looked so green and fresh a few minutes before. Flitterwing was terribly frightened.

"The sooner I get out of this the better," he said to himself, skipping away from the gardener's big fingers. Then he spread his wings and flew up and away, over the wall and over the garden and on and on. He went on flying, flying, till all his friends were left far behind and he came to strange streets such as he had never seen before. Still he went on flying, flying. You see he was extremely anxious to be very far away from the gardener with the big fingers and the terrible, sharp prongs.

At last he became dreadfully tired. It would be impossible, he felt, to go on flying much longer, so he looked about him for shelter. He saw an open window, and beyond it a large cool room. Here was shelter at all events, so he flew straight in. There were a number of tables and chairs in the room, and at each table a man sat writing; but Flitterwing was too much frightened to see anything. He only wanted to find a place where he could hide and rest. A large ink-pot stood on a table, and just inside the ink-pot was a little ledge where a fairy might rest comfortably. Flitterwing lost no time; he darted into the ink-pot and sat down on the ledge. In a few moments he folded his tired wings about him and fell fast asleep.

Now, the room into which Flitterwing had flown was a place where a great deal of business was done. Every day a number of men sat there adding up figures and writing letters about dull things that neither you nor I could understand. If you have done many sums, you will agree with me that no sensible man could really like spending all his time in adding up pounds, shillings, and pence. Very few of the men in this big room really liked it. Some of them wanted to be playing cricket or golf, some would rather have been reading books or listening to beautiful music; and every one of them was longing to be in the country among the flowers and the fairies. And there was one among them--a little man with a pale face and a thin coat--who wished above all things to be making poetry. There were two good reasons against his doing this. In the first place, he was obliged to earn money, and this is more easily done by adding up figures than by making poetry; and in the second place, he did not in the least know how poetry ought to be made.

On the sunny morning when Flitterwing took refuge in the ink-pot the Man in the Thin Coat was very busy. There were rows and rows of figures waiting to be added up, so that there seemed to be no end to them. A large sheet of paper was before him on which he was doing these sums, and the figures were arranged in terribly long columns--and no doubt you know how unpleasant that is. Suddenly something glittered in the air for a moment and then disappeared. It was so bright that it caught his eye and made him lose his place. He thought it was some beautiful kind of insect with the sunshine caught in its wings.

"It was like a messenger from the summer!" he said to himself.

Then he dipped his pen in the ink-pot and went back to his sums.

He had been working busily for some time when he noticed something very curious. His pen was not writing figures at all! He was thinking about figures, and he wished to put figures on the paper, so it was a very strange thing that his pen was writing words all the time. The words were arranged in short lines with a capital letter at the beginning of each line.

"Dear me, how annoying!" he said to himself. "What can I have been thinking of? This will never do."

So he took a fresh sheet and began again.

He imagined that he was copying all the figures on to the clean sheet of paper, for that was what he intended to do. He wrote the figures very quickly, as he thought, because he wanted to make up for lost time. Then he glanced at what he had written--and threw down his pen angrily.

There were no figures at all on the paper; nothing but line after line of words. He began to think he must have got a sunstroke.

"This is really terrible!" he muttered. "I must pay more attention to what I am doing."

So he took another clean sheet of paper and began again.

It was no use; the pen refused to make a single figure.

Then the Man in the Thin Coat was in despair. He pushed the paper away from him and threw himself back in his chair.

"There is something very serious the matter with me," he said to himself. He did not notice that another man had come up to the table and was gathering together the sheets of paper that lay on it. This was the person who paid the Man in the Thin Coat for doing his sums for him. He had a round face and a big waistcoat.

"Come, come! what's this?" he said, looking at the sheets of paper. "Poetry, I declare! So you're a poet, are you? That's all very well, but I don't pay you to write poetry."

The poor Man in the Thin Coat looked very much disturbed. When you come to think of it, it is a disturbing thing to find you are writing poetry when you imagine you are doing sums.

"I couldn't help it," he said meekly.

"Yes, yes, that's the excuse they all make," said the Man with the Big Waistcoat. Then he took up the papers and began to read. There was silence in the room while he was reading the poem that the Man in the Thin Coat had written by mistake; every one left off working, and watched with great interest to see what would happen. The silence lasted for some time.

"Dear me!" said the Man with the Big Waistcoat at last. "This is a very beautiful poem!"

Then he began to read aloud.

The poem was about the summer; about the sunshine and the blue sky and the singing larks that were far away from that ugly room. It seemed as though the far-off fields and the glory of the sun had been really brought there, to the tired men who sat listening. And to each man as he listened came a dream of the thing he loved best. To one man the room seemed to have turned into a garden; the scent of a thousand roses was in the air, and the colours of a thousand flowers. Another man thought he was in a field, lying under a tree and looking at the pattern of the leaves against the sky. And another saw the sunshine sparkling on the dear sea, and the little ripples running races on the sand. But the Man in the Thin Coat saw more things than any of them.

And while they were all listening to the beautiful poem about the summer, little Fairy Flitterwing slipped out of the ink-pot and flew off to play with a sunbeam on the window-sill. The sunbeam showed him a very comfortable scarlet geranium that was growing in a window not far off, so Flitterwing went to live in it, and found a safe home at last.

And the Man in the Thin Coat went back to his sums. He was happier than he had ever been before, because he had written a beautiful poem. He was never able to write any more poetry, and he thought this was rather odd until, years afterwards, his little daughter guessed the truth. He had just finished reading to her his poem about the summer.

"Why, Daddy," she said, "there must have been a fairy in your ink-pot when you wrote that!"

_THE BOX OF DREAMS_

Long ago there lived in a far country a little girl called Gretel, whose mother was dying. Before she died she said to Gretel--

"I am very poor, and I have no money to leave for you after I am gone. I have nothing to give you but this box. It was given to me when I was a child by some one who was wise and good. You must be very careful of it, for it is full of Dreams, and they are hard to keep safely. You must never open the box except when you are alone, or the Dreams will fly away. But keep them safely till your hair is grey, and something will happen to surprise you."

Gretel took the box and hid it safely, and said nothing about it to any one. Her mother died a few days afterwards, and then Gretel was sent away to be a little servant, and to work very hard. She had to get up early, and light the fire, and feed the pigs, and she had to wash the dishes and scrub the floor, and do a great many other things, so that there was very little time for anything but work. All the time her box of Dreams was hidden away upstairs in her little trunk, underneath her Sunday frock. Often, when she was working in the kitchen, or in the farmyard among the hens, she was thinking of her box of Dreams; and sometimes when she was quite alone she would open it and look inside. The first time she opened the box she felt a little bit frightened, for she had never seen any Dreams before, and she was not sure what they were like; but when she saw them, soft and pink and downy, like lovely sleeping birds, she was not frightened any more.

"Oh, but they are pretty things!" she said to herself. "How I hope I shall be able to keep them safely till my hair is grey! They look as if a breath would blow them away, out of the window and over the hill!"

For a long time she was very careful not to let any one see her pretty rosy Dreams. Indeed, she never spoke of them; and the old farmer's wife, whose servant she was, little guessed that anything so strange as a box of Dreams was hidden upstairs in the garret, underneath Gretel's Sunday frock.

The farmer and his wife had a son about the same age as Gretel. His name was Eitel. He was a big, clumsy sort of boy, and not very clever; but Gretel had very few friends, so when Eitel was kind to her and talked to her over the fire in the evenings she was very glad. Sometimes he carried the big bucket for her when she went out to feed the pigs, and sometimes in the summer they made hay together in the field on the hillside. In this way they became great friends. Gretel told Eitel everything that had happened to her since she was a little child; and one day she told him about her box of Dreams.

"Let me see them, Gretel dear," said Eitel.

"Oh, but I mustn't!" said Gretel. "No one must see them till my hair is grey. If any one sees them they will fly away, out of the window and over the hill."

"What are they like?" asked Eitel. "And what are they for?"

"They are lovely," said Gretel, "but I don't know yet what they are for."

"Come, let me see them," said Eitel coaxingly. "I believe I see a grey hair on your head, Gretel."

It was really a bit of white thread, but Gretel thought her hair must be growing grey, so she ran upstairs and fetched the box of Dreams down to the kitchen. She opened the box very carefully, and Eitel peeped in.

_Pouf! Pouf!_ Half-a-dozen soft rosy Dreams fluttered out from under the lid, and hovered in the air for a moment like wisps of pink mist. Gretel shut the box with a snap, and tried to catch the floating Dreams with her fingers. But it was too late. They floated higher and higher, farther and farther, out of the window and over the hill.

"Oh, Eitel," cried Gretel, sobbing, "I have lost my Dreams--so many of them--so many of them!"

"Well," said Eitel, "I don't see that there's much to cry about. They were only pink fluff after all! I wouldn't cry about pink fluff if I were you!"

So Eitel went out of the house whistling, and thinking that girls were sometimes very silly; while Gretel carried her box upstairs, crying, and thinking that boys were often very unkind. As soon as she was in her room she opened her box again, and found to her great joy that it was still half full of beautiful Dreams.

She soon made friends with Eitel again, but she never spoke to him any more about her box of Dreams.

As the years went by Gretel became first a big girl and then a grown-up woman, and still she had to work for her living. She lived in a good many different places, sometimes with nice people and sometimes with people who were not kind to her; but wherever she lived she had to scrub and sweep, and get up early and go to bed late. She still kept her box of Dreams safely in her little trunk, hidden under her Sunday frock. Since the time that she had lost so many of her Dreams she had never opened the box except when she was alone. She was afraid of losing some more; and, besides, she did not like it when Eitel laughed at her and called her pretty Dreams "nothing but pink fluff." So she made up her mind to wait till her hair was really grey.

It seemed to her sometimes that this would never happen! Her hair was browner than other people's, she thought, and was not going to turn grey at all. But though the time seemed so long to her, she was as a matter of fact still a young woman when she discovered that there were two grey hairs growing among the brown ones. She was combing her hair at the time, and the moment she saw the grey hairs she dropped the comb, and clapping her hands for joy ran quickly to get her box of Dreams out of her little trunk. She was so much excited that her trembling fingers could hardly undo the fastenings of the box.

When the box was at last open she was still more excited. Her mother had promised that she should be surprised, but she had not expected such a strange and delightful and altogether wonderful surprise as this! You could never guess what had happened! Her pretty rosy Dreams had all turned into jewels more splendid than any you ever saw or heard about! Every kind of precious stone was there--emeralds and pearls and fiery opals, glowing rubies and sea-blue sapphires, besides a great many strange stones whose names you have never heard.

Gretel gasped.

She sat on the floor beside the box, and stared and stared. She could hardly believe that the glittering things were real, and she could not believe at all that they belonged to her. At first she expected every minute that they would disappear, and she was afraid to touch them; but presently she took courage and lifted them out of the box one by one. Then she took them to the light, and they looked still more beautiful than before.

As Gretel sat on the floor near the window, with the many-coloured jewels glimmering and shimmering in her lap, she came gradually to understand that when her mother gave her the box of Dreams she gave her great riches.

Gretel lived to be very old, but she never lost her jewels. She was able now to show them to all the world without any danger of their flying away, and as time went on the people flocked to see her and her jewels. Eitel admired them as much as any one, but he could never be persuaded that the fluffy pink things he had once seen had really turned into these shining and wonderful stones.

_THE FAIRY WHO HAD ONLY ONE WING_

I am going to tell you now about a fairy who lost one of his wings. His home was in a white rosebud, which one would imagine to be a nice, safe, comfortable home for a fairy to have. And yet it was while he was in the white rosebud that the terrible accident happened which left him with only one wing.

All would have been well if he had stayed in the country. But one day a man came with scissors and snipped the white rosebud off the tree, and packed it in cotton-wool, and sent it off to London. Of course the fairy had to go too, and a very uncomfortable journey he had. There were a number of other flowers packed in the same box, and in each flower there was a fairy; so they were all able to grumble together. But you can't grumble with any real comfort when you are packed very tightly, and have to talk through a good deal of cotton-wool.

At last the journey was over, and the rosebud was taken out of the cotton-wool and put in water. Then the fairy crept up from the heart of the rosebud, and put his head over the edge of the petals and looked about him.

There were flowers all round him: flowers in pots, flowers in glasses, flowers lying on the table, flowers in baskets, and great bunches of flowers in the big window. The truth was that the rosebud was in a flower-shop, but he did not know this. He only knew that it was very pleasant to be again in a place that was full of flowers and fairies.

He thought he was going to enjoy himself; but that was because he did not know how cruelly fairies are sometimes treated in flower-shops. The people who arrange the flowers have a horrible way of trying to kill the fairies; and this is what they do. They take a dreadful, sharp piece of wire and poke it through the very heart of the flower, and then fasten it tightly round the stem! You will see at once that nothing is more likely to hurt a fairy than this. Indeed, he would certainly be killed, if it were not almost impossible to kill a fairy.

The little rosebud-fairy was lying comfortably curled up, deep down among the white petals of the rose, when suddenly he saw coming through the walls of his home a sharp glittering point!

"Oh dear!" he cried, trying to scramble out of the way.

But that was no use, the glittering point came nearer and nearer.

"Oh dear--oh dear!" he cried again. "Where is it coming to? Oh--it's coming this way--the horrible thing. _Oh--oh--oh!_"

It was no wonder that he cried out. The dreadful wire had caught one of his beautiful gossamer wings, and dragged it, and torn it, till there was nothing left of it but some little shreds of fluttering gauze.

"What shall I do?" he wailed. "How can I fly with only one wing, and what is the use of a fairy that can't fly? What shall I do?"

He picked up the torn pieces of his wing and wondered if he could mend them. But he soon saw that it was impossible, so he folded them up carefully and laid them inside the rose-petals; and ever afterwards there was a faint tinge of pink deep down in the heart of the rosebud.

For a long time, long after the rosebud had been tied up with a sprig of fern and put in the window, the poor little fairy went on moaning and sighing over the loss of his wing. He was still sighing when a little girl came into the shop. If the fairy had not been hiding among the petals of his rosebud he would have seen at once that she was the kind of little girl that the fairies always love; a little girl with bright eyes and a laughing face--altogether a very nice little girl. She pointed to the white rosebud and said--

"I want to buy that rosebud, please, for Granny's birthday."

In another minute she was walking along the street with the rosebud in her fat hand.

Then the fairy crept up from the heart of the rose and looked over the edge of the petals. The little girl saw him at once and was not at all surprised.

"There you are!" she said. "I wondered when you would look out. Of course I knew there was a fairy in the rosebud, or I wouldn't have bought it. It would have been no use, you see."

"What a very nice little girl!" thought the fairy. "She seems to have a great deal of sense."

The little girl went on: "Poor thing, I see your wing has been torn off. That nearly always happens to the fairies that come from flower-shops. But I dare say Granny won't mind. She sees very few fairies. I am going to leave you at Granny's house because it is her birthday. Now remember, you're to be very nice to Granny, because she sees so few fairies."