Part 5

“They dressed as I do,” said the Fairy. “But sometimes their faces were painted green or red or blue. And I could see no good in that. Sometimes they wore tassels of hair at their belts. Ugh! I did not like that fashion. Sometimes their hands were red, and when they went away the waters of my spring were stained. Ugh! Neither did I like that. But they were brave and strong and noble. I loved the Red Men, for they lived out of doors in the sweet sunlight, as I did. They loved the fresh air and the blue sky and the green grass. They would have no stifling roof over their heads to shut out the sky; no four walls to keep off the fresh air. Ugh! I cannot breathe in a house. I stifle! I choke!”

“Then how did you come to be shut up in this house?” asked Rob, wondering very much.

“Listen. The White Men came to Shawmut; White Men with cows and dogs, women and children. They built houses on the Hill, near the bubbling springs, and planted corn. They drove away the Red Men, and I loved them not, for they were different. They wore ugly dark garments, hats and short cropped hair. They lived in close wigwams, and cared nothing for fresh air and blue sky. Neither did they love the trees, but cut them down to burn, and mowed the flowers for their ugly ploughed fields. The woods and the streams meant nothing to them but places wherein they might hunt and fish, which they did gloomily. For they were solemn folk and sad. They thought it wicked to laugh merrily, as the brook laughs, or to smile like the flowers. Even the little children dared not be too gay, but were afraid of their fathers!”

“That must have been a horrid time for children,” said Rob.

“Alas! It was indeed a sad time for everybody,” went on the Fairy. “The brave Red Men were gone. Even the rabbits and squirrels were gone. The Hill was peopled with solemn and ugly folk, who dared not be happy, and it was no longer beautiful as before. Yet I could not go away and leave my spring, my dear spring, which ran sweet and clear as ever. It was the favorite fountain of the Puritans, and crouching down under the moss and ferns I watched them come and go, gloomily, filling their buckets and pitchers. But I loved them not, and I hoped that the Red Men would come back and drive them away. But the Red Men never came again.”

“And what happened next?” asked Rob, much interested.

“Years went by, and the Hill became crowded with the White Men’s ugly wigwams. The springs still bubbled, but it was a sad song that they sang, for everything was changed. But that was not the worst. Came a day when a man built a house over my very spring! He shut in the bubbling water under a roof, between four ugly walls, where the blue sky could no longer shine upon it nor the fresh air visit it freely! Alas! Would that I had escaped before then. I might have gone earlier, though it would have been sorrowful to desert my lonely spring. But I had not guessed what was about to happen until it was too late. I had not thought that even a White Man could be so cruel as to wall up a living spring. I was asleep under the moss and ferns when they raised the roof over me. Alas! I did not even waken at the sound of their wicked hammers. But when I opened my eyes it was too late. There was a screen between me and the sky!”

“Why did you not run away?” asked Rob sympathetically.

“Oh, you do not understand,” answered the Fairy with a sad little smile. “I might have escaped at any time before the roof covered me. But as soon as there was a roof above my head, and four walls rose around me, I was under the magic spell of the White Men. I could not go away, even though the doors and windows were yet yawning holes. I must remain, even as the well must remain, until some one should take pity on me and set me free.”

“And could you find no one to do that in all those years?” cried Rob.

“Alas! No. The people who lived in the house were dull folk who did not believe in Fairies. For many years and many years I have remained shut up in the darkness of this cellar, pining in the deserted well. It is quite useless and forgotten. Long ago the ferns and mosses died, and I have no green thing left to love, nothing beautiful to see.”

“Poor Fairy!” said Rob, and the tears stood in his eyes.

“I have cried, I have called, I have knocked on the walls of the well,” said the Fairy, “but no one has seemed to hear my voice. Or if folk heard they have not understood. Years ago some one who stepped as you step, whose voice sounded like yours--I never saw his face--used to come sometimes and listen at the well, and I heard him wish and wonder. But that was all.”

“It must have been my father!” exclaimed Rob, remembering what had been said at the breakfast table.

“But he could not understand what I tried to tell him,” went on the Fairy. “He wondered and walked about, but he always went away without doing anything. It was as if I spoke a foreign language. But you see I do not. You understand me quite well, is it not so?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Rob. “And yet it is very strange. It is not language such as others speak. It is like trickling water that makes words.”

The Fairy laughed. “It is not language at all,” he said. “But you know it. There were women, too; women with loud voices and a curious twist to their tongues. They heard my voice, some of them seemed even to understand what I cried. For I heard them exclaim and wonder and talk of the Fairy Folk. The first time that this happened I was hopeful. Surely, I said to myself, they know the Fairies. They say that they come from a Green Land where many Fairies live. Surely, surely they will love the Little Men of another country. They will understand why I long for green grass and blue sky and fresh air. They will help me to escape. But no! They were cowards. They screamed and fainted when I spoke from the old well. They must have had wicked hearts, for they feared the Fairies. They dared not come near, but complained to the master and mistress, and would not live in the same house with me.”

“Silly things!” said Rob. “Katie was one of them.”

“So to please them the well was covered,” sighed the Fairy, “and then it was worse than ever. Think how dark, how lonely, how ugly a home it was for an Indian Fairy who loved the free, open life of outdoors! Oh, for the green woods, the sunshine and blue sky! The song of birds and the odor of flowers! Oh, to feel the soft green moss, and taste the dew fresh in the morning! Please let me out, kind boy, that I may know those joys again!”

“Dear Fairy,” said Rob hesitatingly, “I am so sorry, but to find all these things, save the sky and air, one must now seek far from here. The White Men have driven them away, just as they drove the Indians, the squirrels, and the rabbits. There is no green grass, there are no flowers, no moss, no ferns on all the Hill.”

“What do you tell me!” cried the Fairy. “My Hill is no longer beautiful?”

“It is beautiful,” said Rob. “At least, the White Men call it so. But the wigwams are thick and very tall, shutting out the sunlight from the paths between. And these paths are dusty, hard streets, with neither grass nor trees nor flowers.”

“Oh, why do White Men try so hard to make the world ugly?” wailed the poor Indian Fairy. “How can they live away from the woods and the flowers and the beautiful, beautiful green grass! Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

Rob thought and wondered, and thought again. And at last he had an idea. “There is a green country not so very far from here,” he said. “One goes there in an electric car,--but you don’t know what a car is. Never mind. I went there yesterday and brought away some beautiful ferns, growing in the mossy earth.”

“Oh, that I might see them!” cried the Fairy eagerly. “One sniff of leafy mould, one breath of the woods lingering about the tufted moss! To lie once more in the shadow of a fern and feel its freshness on my face! Where is this woodsy wonder?”

“It is upstairs in my bedroom,” answered Rob. “Will you come with me?”

The Fairy hesitated, looked at the pail of water resting beside the well, and brightened with a sudden thought.

“Yes!” he cried. “I know what may be done. You can set me free, kind boy, you only, of all the folk who have come to the Indian spring since the Red Men left it. The spell which binds me to the spring and chains me beneath the roof can only be broken when the water is set free again to mother earth. Yesterday I came near to being emptied into the horrible sewer. You heard my cry as the first of the water was lost. You saved me. For had the pail been emptied then I must have followed. And to what a fate!”

“It empties at last into the ocean,” said Rob.

“And that would have been the end of me,” shivered the Fairy. “Salt water is the one thing which would destroy me utterly. But come now. I know how I may be freed. Take the pail of water and bring me with it to the blessed clump of ferns.”

Rob agreed; he took up the candle in one hand and the pail of water in the other. Lightly as a bird the Fairy sprang upon the rim of the pail, clinging to the cord. And so they went together up out of the cellar, through the empty kitchen and dining-room; very softly up the stairs, past the library of silent-talking books; up and up, very, _very_ creepily past the bedroom door ajar, whence Rob heard the sound of his father and mother snoring peacefully; up and up and up, tiptoeing so as not to wake Katie, to Rob’s own chamber. And there on the window-seat stood a big flower-pot with the beautiful ferns which the day before Rob had dug up in the woods. The Fairy smelled them as soon as he entered the room.

“Ah!” he cried, laying both little hands on his breast, “How good that is! Dear boy, empty the water quickly from the pail into the earth brought from the woods, and I shall be free to lie under my dear ferns once more.”

Rob emptied the pail into the flower-pot. And as the last drop of water trickled from the bucket, with a glad cry that sounded like the tiniest of Indian war-whoops, the Fairy leaped into the moist little dell which the ferns made, and curled up against one of the stalks, hugging it lovingly.

“Dear fern!” he cried. “Dear woodsy fern! How sweet you smell. Dear moss, how soft you are! Dear fragrant earth, made of dead leaves and all the ripe finished things of the forest! Oh, I am myself once more. Dear boy, you have made me very happy.”

“And you will live here with me in my chamber, always and always, dear Fairy?” begged Rob eagerly. “That will be so good! I shall be happy indeed to have you for my little neighbor. And I will never, never tell any one about you, nor let them disturb your green home.”

The Fairy looked at Rob and sighed. “Little friend,” he said, “I love you dearly. I would gladly make you happy. But I have yet one more thing to ask of you. Think of it! Even now I am shut under a White Man’s roof,--I, an Indian Fairy! So many years in a foreign wigwam, walled in a dark, skyless well! Oh! Let me go back to the green wood. Let me be free once more like the rabbits and the squirrels. Will you set me free, even though it means that you will never see me again?”

Rob looked at the Fairy and his lip trembled. “I hoped”--he began. But he took a long breath and said to himself, “I will not be selfish. I will be kind and do as I would be done by.” Then he spoke aloud. “Tell me how I may set you free, dear Fairy, and I will do it.”

“Ah, my kind friend!” cried the Fairy, “I knew you would be generous! This, then, you shall do for me. I will sleep to-night in your chamber, and to-morrow, when the sun is high, you shall take up the ferns out of the flower-pot, these ferns all moist with the water of the Indian spring. You shall take them up, and me with them,--though you will not see me after daylight,--and carry them to the woods whence you took them. And when you set them back in the ground of the forest where they grew, then I shall be free, free, free! Oh, dear boy, will you do this for me?”

“Yes, I will do this for you,” said Rob gravely.

“Thanks, thanks!” cried the Fairy. “And now, the night is almost done. I think I feel the daylight coming. You will see me no more. But I shall be sleeping soundly under the fern. And do you likewise go to rest in your little bed. Look! You are shivering with cold! But to-morrow do not forget your promise.”

“I will not forget,” said Rob, feeling indeed very cold and shivery. He crept away to his little bed, and was soon sound asleep, warm and comfy.

III

It was late when Rob woke the next morning. At first he thought that the adventure with the Indian Fairy must have been a dream. But as soon as he sat up in bed he saw the tin pail on the floor beside the window-seat, and the fern moist and green in the flower-pot. So he knew that it must all have been true. But he could not see the Fairy himself, though he knew that the little fellow must be snugly curled up under the green fronds of the fern.

When he came down to the breakfast table his father and mother were talking earnestly about something.

“It is a wonder he wasn’t killed!” said his Mamma, shuddering. “Why did you ever show him that dreadful well?”

“I shall have the cover screwed down,” said Mr. Evans. “It really isn’t safe. Hello, Son! You walked in your sleep again last night, did you know it? I suppose you don’t remember. But Mamma found one of your slippers outside the library door this morning, and Katie found the other on the cellar stairs. And Rob! _The cover of the old well was open!_ However did you lift it?”

“I don’t remember how I lifted it,” said Rob, quite truthfully, and he looked dazed.

“Well, we can’t have this, you know,” said his father. “I shall have to lock your door every night. But we will have that old well screwed up hereafter. Perhaps that will satisfy Katie, though I think she will not be troubled with any more noises in the wall. She says that there was a big, big rat dead in the trap this morning.”

And indeed, nobody ever heard any more noises in the cellar after Rob helped the Indian Fairy to escape. That very morning, right after breakfast,--for it was a Saturday and there was no school,--he dug up the ferns which he had planted in his flower-pot, and put them in a little basket with the earth around their roots. Then he started to take the electric car which would carry him out of town to the woods.

“Where are you going, Rob?” asked his Mamma, seeing him with cap in hand.

“I am going to take my ferns back to the woods,” Rob answered. “I think it is cruel to keep things that love the sunshine and the fresh air shut up in a house. I am sure that the ferns would much rather be back in the woods, don’t you think so, Mamma?”

“Well, I am sure I never thought of that!” said his Mamma. “But you may go if you will be back in time for dinner.”

So Rob took the ferns to the woods and set them back in their first home under a big gray rock, the prettiest little spot in the world for a Fairy to dwell! But he saw nothing more of the Indian Fairy, though he looked and looked; and after he had started for home, went back there again three separate times to look, because he hated to part from his little new friend. But the last time he heard, or thought he heard, a very tiny, far-off, trickly voice say,--

“Farewell, my friend! Farewell! I am free, free, free! And you shall always be happy when you come to the woods, even if you never see me. For I will make this charm about you, because you were kind. Farewell, farewell!”

And this was the last that Rob ever heard of the Indian Fairy, though he went often and often to that same place in the woods; but the Fairy charm did indeed prove true, and Rob was always very, very happy as soon as he came into the woods, happier than he was anywhere else.

FAIRIES

If I should see a Fairy, I should not be afraid, I know so much about them, From all that I have read.

I’ve planned how I would greet them, And what I ought to say; I’d have my Wish all ready, To save the least delay.

I sometimes feel them near me, But still I cannot see. I wonder, oh! I wonder, Are they afraid of me?

The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

THE FLOWER PRINCESS By ABBIE FARWELL BROWN

“Here is a return to the gracefully romantic fairy stories we all used to love. Four tales of adventure in the country where the unreal touches upon the real, prettily illustrated and written with the literary skill that always appeals to the good taste of a child.”

_The Outlook, New York._

“Delicate fancy and humor have gone into the making of these pretty tales for children, which prove again Miss Brown’s title to be numbered among the story-tellers mothers may depend upon.”

_The Christian Register, Boston._

Illustrated. Square 12mo, $1.00.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

By ABBIE FARWELL BROWN

IN THE DAYS OF GIANTS

“Miss Brown relates some of the bravest tales from the brave old sagas of the Northland. They have an enchantment which appeals particularly to the youthful mind.”

_New York Globe._ Illustrated by E. Boyd Smith. 12mo, $1.10, _net_. Postpaid, $1.21.

THE BOOK OF SAINTS AND FRIENDLY BEASTS

“There is a very tender, sympathetic charm about the book. Miss Brown has chosen a score of stories concerning saints and animals to tell again simply and with a pretty choice of word and phrase.”

_London Times._ Illustrated by F. Y. Cory. 12mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.