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+THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Counterpane Fairy, by Katharine Pyle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Counterpane Fairy
+
+Author: Katharine Pyle
+
+Release Date: February 4, 2001 [eBook #3230]
+[Most recently updated: August 21, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Laura Gjovaag and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Counterpane Fairy
+
+Written and Illustrated by Katharine Pyle
+
+Published by E.P.Dutton & Co. New York
+
+Copyright E. P. Dutton & Co. 1898
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Chapter I. THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN CASTLE
+ Chapter II. THE OWLS AND THE GAMBLESOME ELF
+ Chapter III. STARLEIN AND SILVERLING
+ Chapter IV. THE MAGIC CIRCUS
+ Chapter V. AT THE EDGE OF THE POLAR SEA
+ Chapter VI. THE RUBY RING
+ Chapter VII. THE RAINBOW CHILDREN
+ Chapter VIII. HARRIETT’S DREAM
+ Chapter IX. DOWN THE RAT-HOLE
+ Chapter X. THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY SAYS GOOD-BYE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER FIRST.
+THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN CASTLE
+
+
+Teddy was all alone, for his mother had been up with him so much the
+night before that at about four o’clock in the afternoon she said that
+she was going to lie down for a little while.
+
+The room where Teddy lay was very pleasant, with two big windows, and
+the furniture covered with gay old-fashioned India calico. His mother
+had set a glass of milk on the table beside his bed, and left the stair
+door ajar so that he could call Hannah, the cook, if he wanted
+anything, and then she had gone over to her own room.
+
+The little boy had always enjoyed being ill, for then he was read aloud
+to and had lemonade, but this had been a real illness, and though he
+was better now, the doctor still would not let him have anything but
+milk and gruel. He was feeling rather lonely, too, though the fire
+crackled cheerfully, and he could hear Hannah singing to herself in the
+kitchen below.
+
+Teddy turned over the leaves of _Robinson Crusoe_ for a while, looking
+at the gaily colored pictures, and then he closed it and called,
+“Hannah!” The singing in the kitchen below ceased, and Teddy knew that
+Hannah was listening. “Hannah!” he called again.
+
+At the second call Hannah came hurrying up the stairs and into the
+room. “What do you want, Teddy?” she asked.
+
+“Hannah, I want to ask mamma something,” said Teddy.
+
+“Oh,” said Hannah, “you wouldn’t want me to call your poor mother,
+would you, when she was up with you the whole of last night and has
+just gone to lie down a bit?”
+
+“I want to ask her something,” repeated Teddy.
+
+“You ask me what you want to know,” suggested Hannah. “Your poor
+mother’s so tired that I’m sure you are too much of a man to want me to
+call her.”
+
+“Well, I want to ask her if I may have a cracker,” said Teddy.
+
+“Oh, no; you couldn’t have that,” said Hannah. “Don’t you know that the
+doctor said you mustn’t have anything but milk and gruel? Did you want
+to ask her anything else?”
+
+“No,” said Teddy, and his lip trembled.
+
+After that Hannah went down-stairs to her work again, and Teddy lay
+staring out of the window at the windy gray clouds that were sweeping
+across the April sky. He grew lonelier and lonelier and a lump rose in
+his throat; presently a big tear trickled down his cheek and dripped
+off his chin.
+
+“Oh dear, oh dear!” said a little voice just back of the hill his knees
+made as he lay with them drawn up in bed; “what a hill to climb!”
+
+Teddy stopped crying and gazed wonderingly toward where the voice came
+from, and presently over the top of his knees appeared a brown peaked
+hood, a tiny withered face, a flapping brown cloak, and last of all two
+small feet in buckled shoes. It was a little old woman, so weazened and
+brown that she looked more like a dried leaf than anything else.
+
+She seated herself on Teddy’s knees and gazed down at him solemnly, and
+she was so light that he felt her weight no more than if she had been a
+feather.
+
+Teddy lay staring at her for a while, and then he asked, “Who are you?”
+
+“I’m the Counterpane Fairy,” said the little figure, in a thin little
+voice.
+
+“I don’t know what that is,” said Teddy.
+
+“Well,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “it’s the sort of a fairy that
+lives in houses and watches out for the children. I used to be one of
+the court fairies, but I grew tired of that. There was nothing in it,
+you know.”
+
+“Nothing in what?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Nothing in the court life. All day the fairies were swinging in
+spider-webs and sipping honey-dew, or playing games of
+hide-and-go-seek. The only comfort I had was with an old field-mouse
+who lived at the edge of the wood, and I used to spend a great deal of
+time with her; I used to take care of her babies when she was out
+hunting for something to eat; cunning little things they were, — five
+of them, all fat and soft, and with such funny little tails.”
+
+“What became of them?”
+
+“Oh, they moved away. They left before I did. As soon as they were old
+enough, Mother Field-mouse went. She said she couldn’t stand the court
+fairies. They were always playing tricks on her, stopping up the door
+of her house with sticks and acorns, and making faces at her babies
+until they almost drove them into fits. So after that I left too.”
+
+“Where did you go?”
+
+“Oh, hither and yon. Mostly where there were little sick boys and
+girls.”
+
+“Do you like little boys?”
+
+“Yes, when they don’t cry,” said the Counterpane Fairy, staring at him
+very hard.
+
+“Well, I was lonely,” said Teddy. “I wanted my mamma.”
+
+“Yes, I know, but you oughtn’t to have cried. I came to you, though,
+because you were lonely and sick, and I thought maybe you would like me
+to show you a story.”
+
+“Do you mean _tell_ me a story?” asked Teddy.
+
+“No,” said the fairy, “I mean show you a story. It’s a game I invented
+after I joined the Counterpane Fairies. Choose any one of the squares
+of the counterpane and I will show you how to play it. That’s all you
+have to do, — to choose a square.”
+
+Teddy looked the counterpane over carefully. “I think I’ll choose that
+yellow square,” he said, “because it looks so nice and bright.”
+
+“Very well,” said the Counterpane Fairy. “Look straight at it and don’t
+turn your eyes away until I count seven times seven and then you shall
+see the story of it.”
+
+Teddy fixed his eyes on the square and the fairy began to count.
+“One—two—three—four,” she counted; Teddy heard her voice, thin and
+clear as the hissing of the logs on the hearth. “Don’t look away from
+the square,” she cried. “Five—six—seven” —it seemed to Teddy that the
+yellow silk square was turning to a mist before his eyes and wrapping
+everything about him in a golden glow. “Thirteen—fourteen” —the fairy
+counted on and on. “Forty-six—forty-seven—forty-eight—FORTY-NINE!”
+
+At the words forty-nine, the Counterpane Fairy clapped her hands and
+Teddy looked about him. He was no longer in a golden mist. He was
+standing in a wonderful enchanted garden. The sky was like the golden
+sky at sunset, and the grass was so thickly set with tiny yellow
+flowers that it looked like a golden carpet. From this garden stretched
+a long flight of glass steps. They reached up and up and up to a great
+golden castle with shining domes and turrets.
+
+“Listen!” said the Counterpane Fairy. “In that golden castle there lies
+an enchanted princess. For more than a hundred years she has been lying
+there waiting for the hero who is to come and rescue her, and you are
+the hero who can do it if you will.”
+
+With that the fairy led him to a little pool close by, and bade him
+look in the water. When Teddy looked, he saw himself standing there in
+the golden garden, and he did not appear as he ever had before. He was
+tall and strong and beautiful, like a hero.
+
+“Yes,” said Teddy, “I will do it.”
+
+At these words, from the grass, the bushes, and the tress around,
+suddenly started a flock of golden birds. They circled about him and
+over him, clapping their wings and singing triumphantly. Their song
+reminded Teddy of the blackbirds that sang on the lawn at home in the
+early spring, when the daffodils were up. Then in a moment they were
+all gone, and the garden was still again.
+
+Their song had filled his heart with a longing for great deeds, and,
+without pausing longer, he ran to the glass steps and began to mount
+them.
+
+Up and up and up he went. Once he turned and waved his hand to the
+Counterpane Fairy in the golden garden far below. She waved her hand in
+answer, and he heard her voice faint and clear. “Good-bye! Good-bye! Be
+brave and strong, and beware of that that is little and gray.”
+
+Then Teddy turned his face toward the castle, and in a moment he was
+standing before the great shining gates.
+
+He raised his hand and struck bravely upon the door. There was no
+answer. Again he struck upon it, and his blow rang through the hall
+inside; then he opened the door and went in.
+
+The hall was five-sided, and all of pure gold, as clear and shining as
+glass. Upon three sides of it were three arched doors; one was of
+emerald, one was of ruby, and one was of diamond; they were arched, and
+tall, and wide, — fit for a hero to go through. The question was,
+behind which one lay the enchanted princess.
+
+While Teddy stood there looking at them and wondering, he heard a
+little thin voice, that seemed to be singing to itself, and this is
+what it sang:
+
+“In and out and out and in,
+Quick as a flash I weave and spin.
+Some may mistake and some forget,
+But I’ll have my spider-web finished yet.”
+
+
+When Teddy heard the song, he knew that someone must be awake in the
+enchanted castle, so he began looking about him.
+
+On the fourth side of the wall there hung a curtain of silvery-gray
+spider-web, and the voice seemed to come from it. The hero went toward
+it, but he saw nothing, for the spider that was spinning it moved so
+fast that no eyes could follow it. Presently it paused up in the
+left-hand corner of the web, and then Teddy saw it. It looked very
+little to have spun all that curtain of silvery web.
+
+As Teddy stood looking at it, it began to sing again:
+
+“Here in my shining web I sit,
+To look about and rest a bit.
+I rest myself a bit and then,
+Quick as a flash, I begin again.”
+
+
+“Mistress Spinner! Mistress Spinner!” cried Teddy. “Can you tell me
+where to find the enchanted princess who lies asleep waiting for me to
+come and rescue her?”
+
+The spider sat quite still for a while, and then it said in a voice as
+thin as a hair: “You must go through the emerald door; you must go
+through the emerald door. What so fit as the emerald door for the hero
+who would do great deeds?”
+
+Teddy did not so much as stay to thank the little gray spinner, he was
+in such a hurry to find the princess, but turning he sprang to the
+emerald door, flung it open, and stepped outside.
+
+He found himself standing on the glass steps, and as his foot touched
+the topmost one the whole flight closed up like an umbrella, and in a
+moment Teddy was sliding down the smooth glass pane, faster and faster
+and faster until he could hardly catch his breath.
+
+The next thing he knew he was standing in the golden garden, and there
+was the Counterpane Fairy beside him looking at him sadly. “You should
+have known better than to try the emerald door,” she said; “and now
+shall we break the story?”
+
+“Oh, no, no!” cried Teddy, and he was still the hero. “Let me try once
+more, for it may be I can yet save the princess.”
+
+Then the Counterpane Fairy smiled. “Very well,” she said, “you shall
+try again; but remember what I told you, _beware of that that is little
+and gray_, and take this with you, for it may be of use.” Stooping, she
+picked up a blade of grass from the ground and handed it to him.
+
+The hero took it wondering, and in his hands it was changed to a sword
+that shone so brightly that it dazzled his eyes. Then he turned, and
+there was the long flight of glass steps leading up to the golden
+castle just as before; so thrusting the magic sword into his belt, he
+ran nimbly up and up and up, and not until he reached the very topmost
+step did he turn and look back to wave farewell to the Counterpane
+Fairy below. She waved her hand to him. “Remember,” she called, “beware
+of what is little and gray.”
+
+He opened the door and went into the five-sided golden hall, and there
+were the three doors just as before, and the spider spinning and
+singing on the fourth side:
+
+“Now the brave hero is wiser indeed;
+He may have failed once, but he still may succeed.
+Dull are the emeralds; diamonds are bright;
+So is his wisdom that shines as the light.”
+
+
+“The diamond door!” cried Teddy. “Yes, that is the door that I should
+have tried. How could I have thought the emerald door was it?” and
+opening the diamond door he stepped through it.
+
+He hardly had time to see that he was standing at the top of the glass
+steps, before —br-r-r-r! —they had shut up again into a smooth glass
+hill, and there he was spinning down them so fast that the wind
+whistled past his ears.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell, he was back again for the third
+time in the golden garden, with the Counterpane Fairy standing before
+him, and he was ashamed to raise his eyes.
+
+“So!” said the Counterpane Fairy. “Did you know no better than to open
+the diamond door?”
+
+“No,” said Teddy, “I knew no better.”
+
+“Then,” said the fairy, “if you can pay no better heed to my warnings
+than that, the princess must wait for another hero, for you are not the
+one.”
+
+“Let me try but once more,” cried Teddy, “for this time I shall surely
+find her.”
+
+“Then you may try once more and for the last time,” said the fairy,
+“but beware of what is little and gray.” Stooping she picked from the
+grass beside her a fallen acorn cup and handed it to him. “Take this
+with you,” she said, “for it may serve you well.”
+
+As he took it from her, it was changed in his hand to a goblet of gold
+set round with precious stones. He thrust it into his bosom, for he was
+in haste, and turning he ran for the third time up the flight of glass
+steps. This time so eager was he that he never once paused to look
+back, but all the time he ran on up and up he was wondering what it was
+that she meant about her warning. She had said, “Beware of what is
+little and gray.” What had he seen that was little and gray?
+
+As soon as he reached the great golden hall he walked over to the
+curtain of spider-web. The spider was spinning so fast that it was
+little more than a gray streak, but presently it stopped up in the
+left-hand corner of the web. As the hero looked at it he saw that it
+was little and gray. Then it began to sing to him in its little thin
+voice:
+
+“Great hero, wiser than ever before,
+Try the red door, try the red door.
+Open the door that is ruby, and then
+You never need search for the princess again.”
+
+
+“No, I will not open the ruby door,” cried Teddy. “Twice have you sent
+me back to the golden garden, and now you shall fool me no more.”
+
+As he said this he saw that one corner of the spider-web curtain was
+still unfinished, in spite of the spider’s haste, and underneath was
+something that looked like a little yellow door. Then suddenly he knew
+that that was the door he must go through. He caught hold of the
+curtain and pulled, but it was as strong as steel. Quick as a flash he
+snatched from his belt the magic sword, and with one blow the curtain
+was cut in two, and fell at his feet.
+
+He heard the little gray spider calling to him in its thin voice, but
+he paid no heed, for he had opened the little yellow door and stooped
+his head and entered.
+
+Beyond was a great courtyard all of gold, and with a fountain leaping
+and splashing back into a golden basin in the middle. Bet what he saw
+first of all was the enchanted princess, who lay stretched out as if
+asleep upon a couch all covered with cloth of gold. He knew she was a
+princess, because she was so beautiful and because she wore a golden
+crown.
+
+He stood looking at her without stirring, and at last he whispered:
+“Princess! Princess! I have come to save you.”
+
+Still she did not stir. He bent and touched her, but she lay there in
+her enchanted sleep, and her eyes did not open. Then Teddy looked about
+him, and seeing the fountain he drew the magic cup from his bosom and,
+filling it, sprinkled the hands and face of the princess with the
+water.
+
+Then her eyes opened and she raised herself upon her elbow and smiled.
+“Have you come at last?” she cried.
+
+“Yes,” answered Teddy, “I have come.”
+
+The princess looked about her. “But what became of the spider?” she
+said. Then Teddy, too, looked about, and there was the spider running
+across the floor toward where the princess lay.
+
+Quickly he sprang from her side and set his foot upon it. There was a
+thin squeak and then —there was nothing left of the little gray spinner
+but a tiny gray smudge on the floor.
+
+Instantly the golden castle was shaken from top to bottom, and there
+was a sound of many voices shouting outside. The princess rose to her
+feet and caught the hero by the hand. “You have broken the
+enchantment,” she cried, “and now you shall be the King of the Golden
+Castle and reign with me.”
+
+“Oh, but I can’t,” said Teddy, “because —because—”
+
+But the princess drew him out with her through the hall, and there they
+were at the head of the flight of glass steps. A great host of soldiers
+and courtiers were running up it. They were dressed in cloth of gold,
+and they shouted at the sight of Teddy: “Hail to the hero! Hail to the
+hero!” and Teddy knew them by their voices for the golden birds that
+had fluttered around him in the garden below.
+
+“And all this is yours,” said the beautiful princess, turning toward
+him with—
+
+
+“So that is the story of the yellow square,” said the Counterpane
+Fairy.
+
+Teddy looked about him. The golden castle was gone, and the stairs, and
+the shouting courtiers. He was lying in bed with the silk coverlet over
+his little knees and Hannah was still singing in the kitchen below.
+
+“Did you like it?” asked the fairy.
+
+Teddy heaved a deep sigh. “Oh! Wasn’t it beautiful?” he said. Then he
+lay for a while thinking and smiling. “Wasn’t the princess lovely?” he
+whispered half to himself.
+
+The Counterpane Fairy got up slowly and stiffly, and picked up the
+staff that she had laid down beside her. “Well, I must be journeying
+on,” she said.
+
+“Oh, no, no!” cried Teddy. “Please don’t go yet.”
+
+“Yes, I must,” said the Counterpane Fairy. “I hear your mother coming.”
+
+“But will you come back again?” cried Teddy.
+
+The Counterpane Fairy made no answer. She was walking down the other
+side of the bedquilt hill, and Teddy heard her voice, little and thin,
+dying away in the distance: “Oh dear, dear, dear! What a hill to go
+down! What a hill it is! Oh dear, dear, dear!”
+
+Then the door opened and his mother came in. She was looking rested,
+and she smiled at him lovingly, but the little brown Counterpane Fairy
+was gone.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER SECOND.
+THE OWLS AND THE GAMBLESOME ELF
+
+
+The next morning when Teddy awoke it was still very early; so early
+that even Hannah was not yet stirring.
+
+Outside everything was wrapped in a silvery mist, and now and then a
+drop of moisture plumped down on the porch roof.
+
+Teddy lay still for a while, growing wider and wider awake, and then he
+began to stir restlessly and wish that his mother would come. After a
+while he called her, but the house was so silent that he didn’t like to
+call very loudly, and there was no answer.
+
+He thought he would call again, and then suddenly he remembered the
+Counterpane Fairy, and wondered if she would like little boys who
+called their mothers so early.
+
+He turned over in bed, and raising his knees into a hill stared at the
+yellow silk square and thought of the wonderful golden castle where she
+had taken him the day before. He wished he knew what all the bird
+people would have done when they reached the top of the stairs. He
+thought they would have put a golden crown on his head and made him
+king.
+
+And the princess was so beautiful he longed to see her again. How
+surprised Hannah would have been if she had heard voices, and had come
+up-stairs to see who it was, and had found the beautiful princess
+sitting with him, and had seen the golden crown on his head! If she
+only knew about it she would never call him a mischievous boy again. He
+had done a great deal more than Hannah could.
+
+“Oh dear, oh dear!” said a little voice just back of his knees; “almost
+at the top, anyway.” Teddy knew the voice; it was that of the
+Counterpane Fairy, and there was the top of her brown hood showing over
+his knees. He watched, breathless with eagerness, until he saw her face
+appear above them, and then he cried out: “I wondered whether you would
+come; I’m so glad. Are you going to show me another story, and will you
+stay a long while?”
+
+The Counterpane Fairy said nothing until she had sat down on top of his
+knees for a while and caught her breath, and then she said: “Well,
+_well!_ It’s steeper than it was yesterday. I thought I should never
+get across that satin square, it was so slippery.”
+
+“Shall I put my knees down?” asked Teddy, moving them.
+
+“For mercy’s sake! no,” said the fairy, clutching at the quilt. “You
+might upset me. Keep right still and I’ll show you another story.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Teddy; “please do; and let me go to the golden castle
+again.”
+
+“No, I can’t do that,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “for that was
+yesterday’s story, and this will be another.”
+
+“But what became of the princess?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Oh! she married the hero, of course,” said the fairy.
+
+“But I thought _I_ was the hero.”
+
+“There, there!” said the fairy, impatiently, “I told you that was
+yesterday’s story, and if you want to see any more you must choose
+another square.”
+
+“Well, I will,” said Teddy. “May I choose that green square?”
+
+“Yes,” said the fairy. “Now fix your eyes on it while I count.”
+
+Teddy began to stare at the green square so hard that he scarcely
+winked, but he heard the Counterpane Fairy counting on in her thin
+little voice until she reached FORTY-NINE.
+
+The green square spread and grew just as the yellow one had done while
+she counted, until Teddy seemed drifting off into endless green spaces.
+Then the Counterpane Fairy clapped her hands and he saw that he was
+hovering over a grassy hillside.
+
+“Now you are an elf, you know,” he heard the fairy say.
+
+At the bottom of the green hill there was a brook, and at the top was a
+line of shady green woods. Overhead the sky was very blue, with shining
+heaps of cottony white clouds; a soft wind was blowing, but the sun was
+warm, and insects were buzzing past intent on business. A brown bird
+whirred by and dropped out of sight among the grasses.
+
+Teddy floated through the air lighter than a feather, and he felt so
+happy that he clapped his hands together and turned head over heels in
+the air. As he came right side up again he saw a bit of thistle-down
+drifting on up the hill, and he was so little that when he flew after
+it and set himself astride of it, it seemed as big as a barrel to him.
+He floated on up the hill with it, and the wind was like a cushion
+behind him.
+
+As they reached the edge of the hill the thistle-down caught on a bush,
+and Teddy almost has his leg wedged between it and a leaf. He jumped
+off in a hurry, and stood looking about him and wondering what he
+should do next.
+
+Suddenly he saw something that made him open his eyes wide in
+astonishment. Four large black-and-yellow butterflies were tied to a
+knot on an old tree close by, but it was not at the butterflies
+themselves that he wondered, for he had often seen them flitting about
+the fields; it was at the way they were loaded down with the strangest
+things: all sorts of fairy household furniture —little chairs and
+tables, bedsteads, tiny pots and pans, a great soup-kettle almost as
+large as a huckleberry, two thistle-down mattresses, and a number of
+other things. All these were very neatly packed and tied between the
+butterflies’ wings with spider-web ropes.
+
+In the middle of the knot was a hole, but instead of being round, as a
+knot-hole generally is, it was square, and there was a little door
+fitted into it.
+
+Suddenly this door opened, and on the threshold of it stood a beautiful
+little fairy. She stood there looking about, and then she drew from her
+pocket a handkerchief, thin and delicate as gossamer, and wiped her
+eyes. After that she began to sob, and Teddy knew that what he had
+thought was the buzzing of a bee inside the knot had really been the
+sound of her weeping.
+
+“Hello!” called the elf.
+
+The fairy stopped sobbing and looked about her. When she saw Teddy she
+stared at him for a moment and then she began to wipe her eyes and sob
+again.
+
+Teddy climbed up the branch of a blackberry bush until he was quite
+close to the knot-hole, and sat down on the stem and stared at her.
+“What makes you cry?” he asked.
+
+Still the fairy said nothing, but she folded her little handkerchief,
+though it was quite wet, and put it carefully back into her pocket.
+
+Just then in the doorway at her side appeared another fairy. He was
+quite different from her, though he, too, was very small. He was as
+withered as a dried pea, and looked as though he must be at least a
+hundred years old.
+
+“Is everything packed up?” he asked in a querulous voice. Then his eyes
+fell on Teddy the elf. He scowled until his little pin-pricks of eyes
+almost disappeared. “Ugh! there’s one of those nasty gamblesome elves,”
+he said. “Now mischief’s sure to follow.”
+
+“I’m not a gamblesome elf!” cried Teddy.
+
+“Yes you are!” said the withered old fairy. “You needn’t tell me! Look
+at your red cap and the way your toes turn down. I say you are a
+gamblesome elf.”
+
+Teddy looked at his toes and sure enough they did turn down. “I wonder
+if I am a gamblesome elf,” he thought.
+
+But the old fairy paid no more attention to him. He seemed to be in a
+great hurry and very cross. He bustled in and out of the knot-hole,
+bringing a broom and an old coat that had been forgotten, and packed
+them on the butterflies, and then he helped the lady fairy on to one,
+and clambered on another himself.
+
+After they were all ready to start he found that he had forgotten to
+unhitch the butterflies, and grumbling and scolding he clambered down
+again and untied them. Then he climbed back once more, and away they
+flew down the hillside and out of sight, the lady fairy weeping all the
+time as though her heart would break.
+
+“I wonder what she was crying about,” said the gamblesome elf to
+himself, as he stared after them.
+
+“I can tell you that easily enough,” said a little voice so close to
+his elbow that it made him jump.
+
+He looked around and saw close to him a brown beetle, sitting on a
+blackberry leaf. Teddy looked at the beetle for a while in silence, and
+then he said, “Well, why is it they’re going?”
+
+“It’s all because of old Mrs. Owl,” said the beetle. “She and old
+Father Owl used to live deep in the woods in a hollow tree, but one
+time they determined to move out to the edge of the hill, because the
+air was better, and what tree should they choose for their home but
+this very one where Granddaddy Thistletop has been living as long as I
+can remember. Then when the owls were all settled they began to
+complain. They said that Granddaddy Thistletop and Rosine were so noisy
+all day that they couldn’t sleep.
+
+“After the little owls hatched out it was worse than ever, for the old
+mother said that every time Rosine cooked the dinner it made the little
+owls sneeze, and so the fairies must go.”
+
+“I wouldn’t have gone,” cried Teddy.
+
+“Oh, yes you would,” said the beetle. “The owls could have stopped up
+the doors and windows, or they could —well, they could have done almost
+anything, they’re so big. You may go in and look at the house, if you
+want to. I have to go down the bush and see old Mrs. Ant. Good-bye!
+I’ll see you again after a while.”
+
+When the beetle had gone, Teddy climbed up to the knot-hole and went
+in. There was a long entry as narrow and dark as a mouse-hole, and with
+doors opening off from it here and there. At the end of the hall was a
+room that must have been the kitchen. It was very bare and lonely now,
+and there was a fireplace at one end with a streak of light shining
+down through the chimney.
+
+While Teddy was standing by the chimney, he heard a rustling and
+stirring about overhead; one of the little owls clicked its beak in its
+sleep, and he heard a sleepy, whining voice: “Now just you stop
+scrouging me. Screecher is scrouging me!”
+
+Then he heard the Mother Owl: “Hus-s-s-h! Hus-s-s-h! Go to sleep; it’s
+broad daylight yet.” After that all was still again.
+
+“I wish,” thought Teddy to himself, “that I could do something to make
+the owls go away.” Then he began to giggle to himself, and put both
+hands over his mouth so that the owls up above wouldn’t hear him.
+
+He tiptoed back to the door in the knot-hole, and looked down at a bush
+with long thorns on it, that grew close by. “I’ll do it,” he said to
+himself; “I’ll break off the thorns and put them in the nest, so that
+the owls just can’t stay there.” In a moment he was down on the bush
+and tugging at a tough thorn.
+
+As soon as it broke off, he lifted it on his shoulder and clambered up
+the rough bark of the tree to the great black hole where the owls
+lived. When he looked down into it, there they were in the nest, fluffy
+and gray, and fast asleep. Very quietly he slipped down, and set the
+thorn in the side of the nest, with the point sticking out. After that,
+he softly clambered out again.
+
+Up and down, up and down the tree he climbed again and again, carrying
+thorns and quietly setting them in the nest, and as he went up and down
+he kept whispering to himself: “I’m a gamblesome elf; oh, yes, indeed I
+_am_ a gamblesome elf.”
+
+After he thought he had put enough in the nest, he went into old
+Granddaddy Thistletop’s kitchen, and, crouching down by the fireplace,
+he listened. It was getting to be twilight now, and the owls were
+beginning to stir. Presently he heard a voice cry out: “Ouch! Flipperty
+is sticking his toes into me.”
+
+“No I ain’t, neither,” said another voice. “It’s Pinny-winny. There,
+she’s doing it to me, too. Now just you stop.”
+
+“’Tain’t me,” cried a little squeaky voice; “it’s Screecher hisself.
+Ow! Ow! I’m going to tell,” and she began to cry.
+
+“You naughty little owls,” cried the Mother Owl’s voice, “what do you
+mean by digging your little sister?”
+
+“I didn’t,” cried Screecher and Flipperty, together. “Ouch! Ouch!
+There’s something sharp in the nest.”
+
+“My dear,” said old Father Owl’s voice from the branch outside, “can’t
+you keep those children quiet?”
+
+“Quiet indeed!” cried old Mother Owl. “Here is the nest all set full of
+thorns, and you expect them to be quiet. No wonder the poor children
+make a noise. Just you come here and help me get the thorns out.”
+
+“Thorns!” cried Father Owl. “How did they get in there?”
+
+“That’s more than I can tell,” said the Mother Owl. “Perhaps it’s old
+Granddaddy Thistletop’s doings. I thought those fairies had gone away,
+but they must be down there still. I’ll just fly down and see, and if
+they are, I’ll make them sorry enough.”
+
+With that, down flew the Mother Owl, and putting one big yellow eye at
+the kitchen window, she looked in. “Who-o-o! you fairies,” she cried,
+“are you in there still?”
+
+At first, her eye looked so very big and yellow that Teddy was
+frightened. Then he remembered that he was a gamblesome elf, so he made
+a face at her, and began to hop up and down and twirl about on his
+toes, singing:
+
+“I won’t go away! I won’t go away!
+I’ll stay all night, and I’ll stay all day.
+Oh, my cap and toes! I’m a gamblesome elf.
+Old owl, you had better look out for yourself.”
+
+
+The old owl looked in for a moment, and then without a word she flew
+back to her nest as fast as she could. Teddy ran over to the chimney
+and listened. He heard the old owl brush into the hollow above, and
+then he heard her saying in a frightened voice: “Husband, husband, what
+do you think! A gamblesome elf has come to live in old Granddaddy
+Thistletop’s house.”
+
+“Oh, my tail-feathers!” cried old Father Owl aghast. “This is bad
+business; we’ll be having trouble and mischief all the time now. It
+would have been better if we had let old Thistletop stay. What shall we
+do?”
+
+“Do! do!” cried old Mother Owl in an exasperated voice; “what is there
+to do, I should like to know, but to get the children away? I wouldn’t
+keep them in the same tree with that gamblesome elf —no, not a night
+longer —for all the mice you could offer me.”
+
+“But how can we get them away?” asked old Father Owl. “They can’t fly.”
+
+“No, we can’t fly!” cried all the little owls. “Oh, what shall we do?
+Ow! Ow!”
+
+“Can’t fly! They’ve _got_ to fly,” said Mother Owl, “and you and I must
+help them. Back to the old tree we go this very night.”
+
+After that there was a great to-do up in the hollow. Teddy watched it
+all lying on his stomach in the door of the knot-hole, for it was
+moonlight by this time and almost as bright as day.
+
+The little owls got up on the edge of the hollow and there they sat,
+teetering and flapping and afraid to fly. Their mother grew crosser and
+crosser, and at last she got back of them and gave them a push, and
+then down they went, fluttering and tumbling and bumping into the
+tree-trunks.
+
+The Father Owl sailed about from branch to branch, calling, “Who-o-o-o!
+Who-o-o! Come on! Spread your wings and go like this. Who-o-o-o!” and
+then he would sail on to another bush; but the Mother Owl flew down
+beside them and showed them how to spread their wings, and pushed them
+with her beak, and gradually the fluttered farther and farther into the
+darkling woods, their cries growing fainter and then dying away until
+all Teddy could hear was the Father Owl’s voice, very faint and far
+away. “Who-o-o! Who-o-o!” Then it too died away, and the woods were
+still.
+
+After a while the moon set and Teddy began to feel very sleepy.
+
+Then a little breeze sprang up; the light grew clearer and the east was
+red, and at last the sun peeped over the top of the hill opposite.
+
+As the first beam struck old Granddaddy Thistletop’s tree, Teddy
+started to his knees, gazing out down the hill-slope. There were the
+four black-and-yellow butterflies flying directly toward the tree as
+fast as their wings could carry them, and on the two foremost ones were
+old Granddaddy Thistletop himself and the beautiful Rosine.
+
+They drew rein at the knot-hole, and the old fairy, skipping from his
+butterfly and never pausing to fasten it, tottered straight to Teddy
+and threw his arms about his neck. “Our preserver!” he cried. “And to
+think I should have called you a gamblesome elf! But never mind; I will
+make it up to you.”
+
+Suddenly he turned and caught the blushing Rosine by the hand. “Here!”
+he cried; “she is yours, and you shall live with us, and learn to turn
+your toes up, and we will all be happy together.”
+
+“But —but —” cried Teddy, starting back, “don’t you know? I’m not an
+elf at all. I’m—”
+
+
+“Well, well! Here we are back again,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “and
+stiff enough I feel after all that journeying.”
+
+“Oh! wasn’t it funny?” said Teddy, and his knees shook with laughter.
+“They really thought I was a gamblesome elf.”
+
+“Take care!” cried the fairy. “There you are shaking your knees again.
+I think, my dear, that if you were to lower them very, very carefully,
+the hill would not be quite so steep.”
+
+“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be careful,” said Teddy, beginning very slowly to
+slide his feet down in the bed. Suddenly, the door-knob turned, and
+Teddy gave a start; —quick as a flash the Counterpane Fairy had
+disappeared.
+
+His mother was coming in carrying his breakfast and a little vase of
+violets on a tray.
+
+“Why, my darling, what a bright, happy face!” she said. “I think my
+little boy must be feeling better this morning.”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER THIRD.
+STARLEIN AND SILVERLING
+
+
+Mis’ Thomas, Ann McFinney’s downstairs to see you about that sewing you
+said she could do for you,” said Hannah, putting her head in at the
+door. Mamma was sitting close to the bed playing a game of Old Maid
+with Teddy.
+
+“Very well, Hannah; tell her I’ll be there in a moment,” she said.
+
+“Oh, please don’t go yet,” said Teddy. “It’s my draw. Match! You’re the
+old maid. Oh, Mamma! You’re an old maid!” And he pointed his finger at
+her and laughed.
+
+“Why, so I am,” said mamma. “Now you can shuffle the cards, and when I
+come back we’ll have another game.”
+
+“Don’t stay long,” begged Teddy.
+
+“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” said mamma, and then she went out.
+
+Teddy lay propped up on the pillow and shuffled and shuffled the cards,
+and wished his mother would hurry. He did not like Ann McFinney, for
+when she came she always cried, and wiped her eyes on the corner of her
+apron, and told how her husband was out of work, and the children
+needed shoes.
+
+Now it was some time before mamma came back, and when she did she had
+her bonnet on. “Darling,” she said, “I have to go out for a while. Mrs.
+McFinney’s baby’s sick, and I’ve promised the poor thing to come over
+and see it. I won’t be gone long, and when I come back I’ll bring you a
+sheet of paper soldiers to cut out.”
+
+“I’d rather have a paper circus,” said Teddy.
+
+“Very well,” said mamma, “I’ll bring you a circus instead.” Then she
+gave him some picture-books to look at while she was out, and kissed
+him good-bye, telling him to be a good boy.
+
+She went out through the next room, and he heard her pause to wind the
+music-box and set it playing. “There,” she called back to him, “you’ll
+have the music to keep you company,” and then she went on down-stairs.
+
+After she had gone Teddy lay fingering the books and not caring to open
+them, he knew them so well. “Oh dear!” he sighed, “I wish the
+Counterpane Fairy was here!”
+
+“Oh dear, dear, dear! How steep this hill is!” said a little voice just
+back of his knees. “Don’t break, me little staff, or down I’ll go, head
+over heels to the bottom.” Teddy knew the voice well, and his heart
+gave a leap of pleasure. There was the pointed cap and the withered
+face of the Counterpane Fairy just appearing above the counterpane
+hill.
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Fairy, I’m so glad you came, and I have the loveliest square
+picked out!” cried Teddy. “I hadn’t seen it before, because it was the
+other side of my knees. It’s that white one with the silver leaves on
+it, and my mamma says it was a scrap left from her wedding dress.”
+
+“Wait, wait,” said the fairy, “till a body gets her breath. Now which
+one is it?”
+
+“It’s that one,” said Teddy. “Will you tell me about it?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said the fairy, “if that’s the one you want. Now fix your
+eyes on it while I count.”
+
+Then the Counterpane Fairy began to count. He heard her voice going on
+and on and on. “FORTY-NINE!” she cried.
+
+
+When Teddy looked about him he saw that he was standing in a long hall
+of white marble veined with silver. There were arches and pillars of
+silver and all the walls were carved with lilies.
+
+Teddy walked slowly down this hall, and as he walked a rosy glow seemed
+to move with him. He looked down to see what made it, and found that he
+was dressed in a tunic of rose-colored silk, such as he had never seen
+before, and it was fastened about the waist with a golden girdle. His
+feet were bare, but the air was so mildly warm that the marble did not
+chill him.
+
+After a while, as he walked slowly and wonderingly down the hall, he
+turned a corner and found himself in another hall just like the first,
+only at one side there was a great crystal window, and sitting on a
+marble seat before it was the Counterpane Fairy herself. She sat quite
+still as though she were listening, and she paid no attention to Teddy.
+
+He was sure it must be the Counterpane Fairy, for it looked like her,
+though she was quite large now; she looked as large as a real woman.
+
+Teddy stood looking at her for a while, and waiting for her to see him,
+but she paid no attention, and so at last he whispered, “Counterpane
+Fairy!”
+
+“Hush!” said she. “I’m listening.”
+
+Then Teddy listened too, and as soon as he did he heard a sound of
+music like that of the music-box in the nursery at home, only it was
+very much clearer, and sweeter, and fainter.
+
+It seemed to come from outside the crystal window, and looking through
+it Teddy saw that outside was the most beautiful garden he had ever
+seen. The grass of the garden was a silvery green; and the paths were
+white. The leaves of the tress were lined with silver, and the branches
+hung with shining fruit. There were lilies growing beside the paths,
+and in the centre of the garden a fountain leaped and fell back into a
+marble basin. The water sparkled as though it were made of diamonds,
+and as Teddy listened he knew that the music he heard was the voice of
+the fountain.
+
+Presently it ceased and then the fairy turned to him and smiled.
+
+“Oh, Counterpane Fairy!” cried Teddy, “may I go out into that garden?”
+
+“That I don’t know,” said the fairy, “but if you want to get there the
+best thing for you to do is find Starlein and Silverling, for they are
+the only ones who can show you the way into the garden.”
+
+“Where are they?” asked Teddy.
+
+“I can’t tell you that, either,” said the fairy, “but they’re somewhere
+in the halls.”
+
+“I’ll go find them,” cried Teddy, and without waiting any longer he
+turned and ran down the hall as fast as he could, he was in such haste
+to find them and get them to show him the way into the garden.
+
+On and on he ran, through one hall after another, through arched
+doorways, and along echoing corridors, until he felt all bewildered and
+out of breath. All the time he was running he seemed to hear the music
+of the singing fountain in his ears, but whenever he stopped to listen
+everything was still.
+
+He was so out of breath that he had begun to walk, when turning another
+corner he suddenly saw before him a little girl who he somehow felt
+sure was Starlein.
+
+Her hair was of a silvery yellow and was like a mist about her head;
+she was very beautiful and was dressed from head to foot in silver that
+shone and sparkled as she moved. Around her was flying a flock of white
+doves, and she was playing with them and talking.
+
+As soon as she saw Teddy she cried out, “Oh, it’s a little child!” and
+running down the hall to him, with her doves flying about her, she put
+her little hands on his cheeks and kissed him. Then she stood back and
+looked at him with her hands clasped. “You dear little boy!” she said.
+“Where did you come from?”
+
+“I came through the white square,” said Teddy.
+
+“I don’t know the white square,” said the little girl, “but I’m glad
+you came. I haven’t anyone to play with since Silverling went away.”
+
+“Where has Silverling gone?” asked Teddy. “I must find him.”
+
+The little girl shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “We
+quarrelled once and he went away. He must be in some of the halls, but
+I’ve been hunting and hunting ever since and I can’t find him.”
+
+Then Teddy told her how the Counterpane Fairy had said that he must
+find Silverling and Starlein and that then perhaps he could get into
+the garden where the singing fountain was.
+
+The little girl shook her head again. “I am Starlein,” she said, “but I
+can’t take you into the garden, because I have never found the gate
+into it since Silverling went away,” and she went over and sat down on
+a marble bench beside the wall, and all the doves settled about her on
+her knees and shoulders.
+
+“Never mind,” cried Teddy, bravely, “you wait here and I’ll go and find
+him. I found you and I’ll find him too.”
+
+Turning he ran down the hall and through an arched way into another
+hall, and there, far, far down at the other end, he saw a little boy
+dressed in silver, who was tossing a silver ball up into the air and
+catching it again.
+
+When he saw Teddy he slipped the ball into his pocket and ran to meet
+him, leaping with delight and clapping his hands. “Oh, little boy!
+little boy!” he cried, “will you come and play with me?”
+
+“Are you Silverling?” cried Teddy, breathlessly.
+
+“Yes,” said the little boy.
+
+“Then come! come quick!” cried Teddy. “Starlein is just around the
+corner, and she is waiting for you to come and show us the way into the
+garden where the singing fountain is.”
+
+He caught Silverling by the hand and without another word they ran as
+fast as they could up the hall and around the corner, through the
+silvery archway, and into the other hall. There Teddy stopped short,
+looking blankly about him. Starlein was gone.
+
+Silverling shook his head sadly. “I know how it would be,” he said.
+“I’ve been hunting for her ever since we quarrelled, but I can’t find
+her, and I can’t find the way into the garden of the singing fountain
+either.”
+
+“What did you quarrel about?” asked Teddy.
+
+“We quarrelled about this,” said the little boy, touching a slender
+golden chain that hung around his neck. “We found it in the garden and
+we quarrelled about who should wear it, but I’d be so glad to give it
+to Starlein now if she would only come back again.”
+
+“Well, wait!” said Teddy. “She can’t be far away and I’ll go and find
+her.”
+
+“No, no!” cried Silverling. “You can’t find her, and I’ll lose you too.
+Stay here awhile, little boy, and play with me, for I’m very lonely.
+Look! Let’s play with my silver ball,” and taking it from his pocket he
+tossed it to Teddy. Teddy caught it and threw it back to him, and so
+they played together in the marble hall, tossing the silver ball and
+shouting with laughter.
+
+At last Silverling missed the ball, and as it rolled on down the hall
+he ran after it, stooping and trying to catch it, but always just
+missing. Teddy shouted and clapped his hands, jumping up and down with
+his bare feet, and then he stood still watching Silverling as he ran
+far, far down the hall.
+
+As he stood thus, suddenly he heard from just around the corner the
+cooing of Starlein’s doves.
+
+He did not stop a moment, but turning ran around into the next hall,
+and there sure enough was Starlein with her doves about her.
+
+“Oh, little boy!” she cried, “I was afraid I had lost you.”
+
+But Teddy caught her by the hand. “Come quick!” he cried, “I have found
+Silverling.”
+
+They ran together into the hall where a moment ago Silverling had been
+playing with the silver ball, but it was vacant now; Silverling was
+gone.
+
+“Well, I never!” said Teddy. Then he turned to Starlein. “Starlein, you
+shouldn’t have gone away when I told you not to.”
+
+“I didn’t,” said Starlein. “I stayed right there.”
+
+Teddy thought awhile. “Then it must have been the wrong hall,” he said.
+“But never mind! I’ll find him again, and this time I’ll surely bring
+him to you; only wait here no matter how long it is.”
+
+“Stop! oh, stop!” cried Starlein. She caught one of her doves in her
+hands and held it out to Teddy. “Here, little boy,” she said; “take
+this with you, and if you can’t find me again, give it to Silverling
+and tell him he is to keep it for his very own.”
+
+“Yes, I will,” said Teddy, and he took the dove and put it in the bosom
+of his tunic, and it nestled there all warm and soft and still.
+
+Then he turned and walked quietly down the hall and into another. He
+went on and on, but he did not run and jump now, for he was thinking.
+After a while, when he turned into another hall he once more saw
+Silverling at play with his silver ball.
+
+“Did you find her?” cried Silverling, eagerly.
+
+“Yes,” said Teddy, “I found her, and she sent you a dove for your very
+own; but, Silverling, I think this. I think the only way for us ever to
+find her together is for us to set the dove free, and to follow it when
+it flies back to her.”
+
+“But we couldn’t follow it,” said Silverling. “It would fly so fast
+that it would be out of sight in a minute.”
+
+“I know,” said Teddy, “but we could tie something to it.”
+
+“What could we fasten to it?” asked Silverling.
+
+The two little boys stood looking about them and wondering what they
+could use. Suddenly Teddy clapped his hands so the dove in his tunic
+started. “We’ll fasten the end of your golden chain to it,” he cried.
+
+No sooner said than done. In a moment Silverling had taken the chain
+from his neck and unfastened the ends. It was so long that it had been
+twisted several times around his neck. Very gently they took the dove
+and fastened the chain to its leg, and then they let it go.
+
+It fluttered up over their heads and circled about them once or twice,
+and then it flew on down the hall with the little boys following it.
+
+They turned many a corner and went through many a door, and at last
+they came into a hall and there —there was Starlein waiting for them
+with her doves about her.
+
+“Oh, Starlein!” cried Silverling.
+
+“Oh, Silverling!” cried Starlein.
+
+They ran to each other and threw their arms about each other’s necks
+and kissed, while the white doves flew circling about them. Then they
+told each other how sorry they were that they had quarrelled, and that
+they would never do it any more, and then they kissed again.
+
+“And you may have the golden chain, Starlein,” said Silverling.
+
+“No, no! you must keep it,” said Starlein.
+
+“Oh, I know what we’ll do!” cried Silverling; “we’ll give it to this
+little boy, because if it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t have found
+each other.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Starlein.
+
+But Teddy held up his hand— “Hush!” he whispered; “don’t you hear it?”
+
+Then they all listened, and sweeter and clearer than ever before they
+heard the voice of the singing fountain in the beautiful garden.
+
+“It is the fountain!” cried Starlein and Silverling, half fearfully.
+
+They each caught Teddy by the hand, and all ran down the hall together,
+and the very first corner that they turned they found themselves at the
+door of the garden.
+
+The wind was blowing the lilies, the fruit on the wonderful trees shone
+and glistened in the sunlight, and the fountain —ah! the fountain was
+no longer singing, for the music-box in the nursery had run down.
+
+Teddy looked about him. Instead of the garden there was the flowery
+India-room. The clock ticked, the fire crackled; —he was back in bed
+once more, and he heard mamma speaking to Hannah in the hall outside,
+so he knew she was home again.
+
+“And that is the end of that story,” said the Fairy of the Counterpane.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER FOURTH.
+THE MAGIC CIRCUS
+
+
+Teddy was still in bed, though the doctor had said that very soon he
+might have the big chair wheeled up to the window and sit there awhile.
+Now he was propped up against the pillows playing with the paper circus
+his mother had brought to him the day before.
+
+His little cousin Harriett had come in yesterday to spend the afternoon
+with him, and together they had cut out the figures — the clown, the
+ring-master, the pretty lady on the white horse, the acrobat on his
+coal-black steed, and all the rest.
+
+This morning he had put some large books under the bedquilt, and
+smoothed it over them so as to make a flat plane, and was amusing
+himself setting the circus out, and arranging his soldiers in a long
+procession as if they were the audience coming to see it.
+
+He seemed so well entertained that his mother said she would go over to
+the sewing-room for a little while to run up some seams on the machine.
+
+When Teddy was left alone he still went on playing very happily, but as
+he set out the soldiers two by two, he was really thinking of the
+Counterpane Fairy and her wonderful stories.
+
+The evening before he had fallen asleep while his mother was reading
+something to his father (for they both sat in Teddy’s room in the
+evenings now that he was ill), and when he woke they were talking
+together about him. They did not see that his eyes were open, so they
+went on with what they were saying. It was his mother who was speaking.
+“He’s such an odd child,” she was saying; “just now he is full of this
+idea of the Counterpane Fairy and her stories, and he talks of her just
+as though she were real. I don’t know where he got the idea. It isn’t
+in any of his book and I thought you must have been telling him about
+it.”
+
+“No,” said papa, “I didn’t tell him.”
+
+“Perhaps it was Harriett,” said mamma, and then she saw that he was
+awake and began to speak of something else.
+
+Teddy wished his mother could see the Counterpane Fairy herself, and
+then she would know that it was a real fairy and not a make-believe.
+When he saw the Counterpane Fairy again he was going to ask her if he
+mightn’t take his mother into one of the stories with him.
+
+He was thinking of her so hard that it did not surprise him at all to
+hear her little thin voice just back of the counterpane hill. “Oh dear,
+dear! and the worst of it is that I hardly get to the top before I have
+to come down again.”
+
+“Is that you, Counterpane Fairy?” called Teddy.
+
+“Yes it is,” said the fairy. “I’ll be there in a minute;” and soon she
+appeared above the top of the hill, and seated herself on it to rest,
+and catch her breath. “Dear, dear!” she said, “but it’s a steep hill.”
+
+“Mrs. Fairy,” said Teddy, “I want to ask you something. You know my
+mother?”
+
+“Yes,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “I know who she is.”
+
+“Well,” said Teddy, “she’s just gone over into the sewing-room, and I
+want to know whether you won’t let me take her into a square sometime.”
+
+“My mercy, no!” said the fairy. “Have you forgotten what I told you the
+first time I came?”
+
+“What was that?”
+
+“I told you I went to see little boys and girls. I don’t go to see
+grown people. They wouldn’t believe in me.”
+
+“My mother would,” said Teddy. “She plays with me and she likes my
+books and I tell her all about you.”
+
+“No, no!” cried the Counterpane Fairy, “I couldn’t think of it. I’m
+very glad to take you into my stories, but if you don’t care to go by
+yourself —” and she picked up her staff and rose as though she were
+going.
+
+“Oh, I do, I do!” cried Teddy. “Please don’t go away.”
+
+“Well, I won’t,” said the fairy, sitting down again, “if you really
+want me to show you another. Have you chosen a square?”
+
+“No, I haven’t yet,” said Teddy. He looked the squares over very
+carefully, and at last he chose the black-and-white one where the
+circus was standing.
+
+“Very good,” said the fairy. “Now I’m going to begin to count.” Teddy
+fixed his eyes on the square and she commenced.
+
+Gradually he began to feel as though the white silk of the square was a
+pale cloudy sky. Before him stretched a white streak, and in the
+distance were some things like black squares; he did not know quite
+what.
+
+“FORTY-NINE!” cried the fairy.
+
+When Teddy looked about him he and the Counterpane Fairy were
+journeying along a dusty white road together, and the fairy looked just
+as any little old woman might, except that her eyes were so bright
+behind her spectacles.
+
+Before them lay a city with black roofs and spires; there was a sound
+of drums and music in the distance, and a faint noise as though a crowd
+of people were shouting a great way off.
+
+“What are they doing over there?” asked Teddy, hurrying his steps a
+little. “Is it a parade?”
+
+“No,” said the fairy, “it’s not a parade, but it is a grand
+merrymaking, and it’s because of it that I’ve brought you here. But I’m
+tired and hungry, for we’ve come a long way, so let us sit down by the
+roadside a bit, and while we rest I’ll tell you all about the goings on
+and what we have to do with them.”
+
+Teddy was quite willing, so he and the Counterpane Fairy sat down
+together on the soft grass beside the road, with the mild and misty sky
+overhead, and the fairy took from her pocket a piece of bread and
+cheese; she broke it in half and one part she gave to Teddy. It seemed
+to him that he had never tasted anything so good, for, as the fairy
+remarked, they were both of them hungry.
+
+After they had finished it all to the very last bit, the fairy brushed
+the crumbs from her lap, and, sitting there with the soft wind blowing
+about them and the black roofs of the city in the distance, the
+Counterpane Fairy told him the story of the King of the Black-Country
+and the Princess Aureline.
+
+“Far off yonder toward the east, where the sky looks so pale and
+bright,” began the fairy, “there lives a king, who is called King
+Whitebeard, because his beard is as white as snow. He had only one
+child, a daughter named the Princess Aureline, and she was as beautiful
+as the day and as good as she was beautiful.
+
+“Because she was so good and beautiful princes used to come from all
+over the world seeking her hand in marriage, and among them came the
+King of the Black-Country, the richest and most powerful of them all.
+
+“The Princess Aureline would have nothing to say to him, however,
+because he was wicked as well as rich, so at last the King of the
+Black-Country gathered his army together and marching against King
+Whitebeard he conquered him and carried off the Princess Aureline
+captive.
+
+“Now there are great rejoicings in the Black King’s country, but the
+Princess Aureline sits and grieves all the time, and nothing the King
+can do can make her smile. The more the Black King does, the more she
+grieves, but she is so very beautiful that the King would deny her
+nothing except to let her go home to her father.”
+
+“I should like to see a princess,” said Teddy.
+
+“So you shall,” said the fairy, “for you are a great magician now, and
+you have come here to do what no other hero in the world dares to do;
+you have come to rescue the Princess Aureline and carry her back to her
+own country.”
+
+“Do you mean I am a real magician?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Why, yes,” said the fairy. “Don’t you see you are dressed in a
+magician’s robe? And there is your magic-chest on the grass beside you.
+Look!” So saying the fairy drew a mirror of polished steel from under
+her cloak and held it up before Teddy, and as he looked into it he
+hardly knew himself; he was dressed in a black hood, and a long black
+robe strangely woven about the hem with characters in white, and he
+held a white staff in his hand. Beside him on the grass was a box bound
+round with iron, and that was his magic-box.
+
+After he had looked in the mirror for a while the fairy hid it away
+again under her cloak. “Now come,” she said, “for it is time we were
+journeying on.”
+
+“But what have I in my box?” asked Teddy, as he picked it up and joined
+the fairy, who was already hobbling along toward the city.
+
+“Don’t you remember?” said the fairy. “It’s your circus.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I remember now,” said Teddy.
+
+After a while he and the fairy reached the city, and everywhere along
+the street were people laughing and dancing and feasting, and all the
+houses were hung with white and black flags. The black flags were for
+the King of the Black-Country, and the white flags were for the
+Princess Aureline. Everywhere they came the people made way for them
+and whispered, “Look! look! That is the great magician who had come to
+show his magic before the Princess Aureline.”
+
+At last they reached an open square, and there was the greatest crowd
+of all. On a raised platform covered with silver cloth, and with steps
+leading up to it, were two thrones; upon one of the thrones sat a tall,
+fierce-looking man dressed in black velvet, and with a crown upon his
+head cut entirely from one great black diamond; upon the other throne
+sat a beautiful young princess. She was as pale as a lily and as
+beautiful as the day, and was dressed in shimmering white. Her hands
+were clasped in her lap and her face was very sad.
+
+On the steps that led to this platform stood two heralds in black and
+white with trumpets in their hands, and all about were ranged soldiers
+two and two. They made Teddy think of the toy soldiers he had been
+playing with, only they were as big as men, and instead of being gay
+with red paint they were in black.
+
+As soon as Teddy and the Counterpane Fairy appeared in this square, the
+two heralds blew a loud blast and come down to meet them. “Make way!
+make way for the magician!” they cried, and they escorted him and the
+fairy through the crowd to the foot of the steps.
+
+The King of the Black-Country stared at him, and his eyes were so black
+and piercing that Teddy felt afraid.
+
+“Are you the great magician?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I am,” answered Teddy, bowing.
+
+“Then let us see some of this magic that we have been hearing about,”
+said the King; “and harkye, Magician, if you can make the Princess
+smile you shall have whatsoever you wish, even to the half of my
+treasure.”
+
+Teddy bowed again, and then he set the chest on the ground, and drawing
+from his girdle an iron key he unlocked it and put back the lid. There
+was the paper circus, just as he and Harriett had cut it out: the
+acrobat and the lovely lady, the horses, the clown, the ring-master, —
+not one of them was left out.
+
+With his magic wand, Teddy drew upon the ground a circle, and then,
+while everybody round craned and stretched their necks to see what he
+was about, he took out the figures and set them, one by one, in the
+ring. Then he waved his wand over them and cried “Abraca-dabraca-dee!”
+
+All the people stood on tiptoes, and the King himself leaned forward to
+see, — but nothing happened.
+
+“Abraca-dabraca-dee!” cried Teddy again.
+
+Still nothing happened; he looked around at the crowd of people, at the
+grim-looking soldiers, and the King, and his heart sank.
+
+“Abraca-dabraca-dee!” he cried for the third time, striking the ground
+with his wand.
+
+Then a wonderful thing happened. The circle he had drawn upon the
+ground began to spread, just as a circle does in the water after one
+has thrown a stone into it. Now it was a great circus ring, and the
+paper circus itself had changed to a real circus. The clown walked
+about, joking, with his hands in his pockets; the ring-master cracked
+him whip; the paper horses were two magnificent steeds, one as black as
+night, and one as white as milk, that cantered round and round, while
+the music sounded, and all the people far away on the outside of the
+ring clapped and applauded.
+
+“Wonderful! wonderful!” cried the King of the Black-Country.
+
+But now there was something more that was wonderful. As the black horse
+cantered round, Teddy ran to him and leaped upon his back, light as a
+feather, and there he rode, his black robe with the white figures
+flying and fluttering around him.
+
+Then, still riding around, he unfastened his gown and threw it from
+him, and there he was dressed in white and silver, and his magic wand
+was changed to a little silver whip.
+
+After that he leaped up into the air, and turned a somersault, lighting
+again upon his horse, while the music played louder and louder.
+
+Teddy rode round and round, now riding backward, now forward, now on
+one foot, now on his hands with his feet in the air. Then he leaped
+upright, and putting his fingers to his mouth he gave a shrill whistle.
+At that the white steed suddenly dashed into the ring and galloped up
+beside the black one, and now Teddy rode with a foot on each. Faster
+and faster he rode, crying “Houp-la!” and even the King clapped his
+hands. Once and twice he rode round the ring and past the platform, but
+as they came round for the third time, Teddy waved his whip in the air.
+“Houp-la!” he cried. “Up! up!”
+
+With that his steeds suddenly leaped from the ring and up the steps of
+the platform to the very top. There Teddy sprang from them and caught
+the Princess Aureline by the hand. “I have come to rescue you!” he
+cried, and before the King could move or speak he had set her upon the
+white horse, he had sprung upon the black, and with a clatter of hoofs
+they were dashing down the steps and across the square.
+
+Then the King of the Black-Country started to his feet. “Stop them!
+stop them!” he cried.
+
+The soldiers had been standing as though turned to stone, but at the
+King’s voice they started forward, reaching out to catch the bridles of
+the horses, but again Teddy raised his magic whip.
+
+“Abraca-dabraca-dee!
+As you were once you shall be!”
+
+
+h e cried.
+
+At the magic words every soldier’s arm fell by his side, their eyes
+changed to little black dots, their faces grew rounder, their legs
+stiffened, and there they stood, nothing more nor less than wooden
+soldiers just like the one —_were_ they his own soldiers? And the
+Princess! Was she only the doll that Harriett had forgotten the night
+before and that Teddy had set up against his knees to watch the show?
+Were the streets only black and white silk?
+
+There he was, back in his own room with the little wooden soldiers and
+the paper circus. There was the square of silk with the book under it,
+and the Counterpane Fairy sitting on his knees.
+
+“Oh! but, Counterpane Fairy,” cried Teddy, “what became of us? Did we
+get away? Oh, I didn’t want to come out of the story just yet!”
+
+“Why, of course you escaped,” said the fairy. “How could the King stop
+you after you had changed his soldiers into wood?”
+
+“And what became of you?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Oh, I took the clown’s cap,” said the fairy, “for it was the
+wishing-cap, and fast as you and the Princess rode back to the country
+of King Whitebeard I was there before you.”
+
+Teddy thought for a while and then he heaved a deep sigh. “I wish I
+really had a circus horse,” he said, “and could ride round and have all
+the people watching and shouting. But what did the Princess say when
+she found I had rescued her?”
+
+“Hark!” said the fairy, “isn’t that your mother coming along the hall?
+I must be going. Oh, my poor bones! What a hill it is to go down! Oh
+dear, dear, dear!”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER FIFTH.
+AT THE EDGE OF THE POLAR SEA
+
+
+The crocuses are up on the lawn,” said Teddy’s mother, who was standing
+at the window and looking out. “And just hear that blackbird! I always
+feel as though spring were really here when I hear the blackbirds
+sing.”
+
+Teddy was still in bed. It seemed to him sometimes that he had spent
+his whole life lying there in the India-room, under the silk
+counterpane, and that it was some other Teddy who used to go to school
+and shout and play with the boys in the street.
+
+“I wish I could go out-of-doors the way I used to,” he said.
+
+“So do I,” said mamma. “But never mind, darling. The doctor says it
+won’t be so very long now before you can be out again, and this
+afternoon we’ll play some nice game or other that you can play in bed.
+Now what would you like it to be?” But before Teddy could answer she
+added, “Oh dear! There comes Aunt Mariah.”
+
+Aunt Mariah lived down at the other end of the village, and she
+generally came every fortnight to spend an afternoon with Teddy’s
+mother. She always brought her knitting in a bag, and a white net cap
+that she put on before the glass as soon as she had taken her bonnet
+off.
+
+Teddy liked to have her come, her needles flew so fast, and she used to
+recite to him, —
+
+“A was an archer, and shot at a frog;
+B was a butcher, and had a great dog.”
+
+
+Then when he was tired of sitting with her and mamma, he could run
+out-of-doors and play.
+
+But he found it was different to-day from what it had been before. He
+was still weak from his illness, and after she had told him all the
+verses that she knew, he grew weary of hearing her talk of Cousin
+George’s wife, and Mrs. Appleby’s rheumatism.
+
+His mother saw that he was growing restless and that his cheeks were
+flushed, so she asked Aunt Mariah to come over to her room to look at
+some calico she had been buying.
+
+When they had gone Teddy lay for a time enjoying the silence of the
+room, but after a while it began to seem too still and the clock ticked
+with a strange loud sound. He wished Aunt Mariah would go away and let
+mamma come back again. It was so lonely, and he was tired of his books.
+
+He was lying on his back, and presently he drew up his knees, and then
+over the tops of them he could only see the upper half of the window,
+and the tips of the pine-trees against the still blue sky outside.
+
+“Oh dear, dear, dear!” said the Counterpane Fairy’s voice just behind
+the hill. “Steeper than ever to-day. Will I ever get to the top?” A
+minute after he saw her little figure standing on the hill, dark
+against the sky, and the staff in her hand like a thin black line.
+
+“Oh, dear Counterpane Fairy!” cried Teddy, “have you come to show me
+another story?”
+
+“Are you sure you want to see one?” asked the Counterpane Fairy.
+
+“Oh, yes, yes, I do!” cried Teddy. “Your stories don’t make me feel
+tired the way Aunt Mariah’s do.”
+
+The fairy shook her head. “I thought her stories were very pleasant,”
+she said.
+
+“So they are,” said Teddy, “but I like her stories best when I’m all
+well, and I like your stories best when I’m sick. Besides I only hear
+her stories and I see yours.”
+
+The fairy smiled. “Well, then, which square will you choose this time?”
+she said.
+
+“I think I would like that one,” said Teddy, pointing to a square of
+watered ribbon that shaded from white to a sea-green.
+
+“That’s rather a long story,” said the fairy, doubtfully.
+
+“Oh, please show it!” begged Teddy.
+
+“Well,” said the Fairy, “fix your eyes on it while I count.”
+
+Then she began and he heard her voice going on and on. “FORTY-NINE!”
+she cried.
+
+
+Teddy was floating on a block of ice across the wide, green Polar sea.
+The Counterpane Fairy was with him, and all around were great fields of
+ice and floating white bergs. The air was very still and cold, but
+Teddy liked it all the better for that, for now he was an ice-fairy. He
+was dressed from head to foot in a suit that shone and sparkled like
+woven frost, and in his belt was a knife as shining as an icicle.
+Something kept bobbing and tickling his forehead, and when he caught
+hold of it he found it was the end of the long cap he wore.
+
+As they drifted along, sometimes they saw a walrus with long tusks
+lying on the ice, or a soft-eyed seal. Once some strange little beings
+that looked like dwarfs, with goggle eyes and straggling black hair,
+caught hold of the block of ice, and lifting themselves out of the
+water made faces at Teddy, but the moment they saw the Counterpane
+Fairy their looked changed to one of fear, and with a queer gurgling
+cry they dropped from the ice and were gone.
+
+“What were those things?” asked Teddy.
+
+“They were ice-mermen,” said the Counterpane Fairy. “Naughty,
+mischievous things they are. I’d like to pack them all off to the North
+Pole if I could.”
+
+“Oh, look! look!” cried Teddy. “Just look at those little bears playing
+over there.”
+
+They had drifted in quite near to the shore, and in among the blocks of
+ice three white bear cubs were playing together like fat little boys.
+They were climbing to the top of an ice-hillock and then sliding down
+again.
+
+As soon as they saw Teddy and the Counterpane Fairy they began to call:
+“Oh, Father Bear! Father Bear! Just come look at these funny things
+floating in to shore on a block of ice.”
+
+In a moment from behind the ice-hill came a great white father bear
+galloping up as fast as he could to see what the matter was. He came
+over toward Teddy growling, “Gur-r-r! gur-r-r-r! Who are you, coming
+and frightening my little bears this way?” But as soon as he saw the
+Counterpane Fairy he grew quite humble. “Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I
+didn’t know it was a friend of yours.”
+
+“Yes, it is,” said the fairy, “and I have brought him here to stay
+awhile. Will you take good care of him?”
+
+“Yes, I will,” said Father Bear. “He shall sleep in the cave with us
+and have part of our meat if he will, and I will be as careful of him
+as though he were one of my own cubs.”
+
+“Very well,” said the fairy; “mind you do.” Then turning to Teddy she
+bade him step on shore.
+
+“But aren’t you coming too?” asked Teddy.
+
+“No,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “I can’t come, but Father Bear will
+take good care of you.” So Teddy stepped onto the shore, and the fairy
+pushed the block of ice out into the water, and waving her hand to him
+she drifted away across the open sea.
+
+The Father Bear stood watching her until she was out of sight, and then
+he turned to Teddy. “Now, you Fairy,” he said, “you may climb up onto
+my back, and I’ll carry you to my wife; she’ll take good care of you
+for as long as the Counterpane Fairy chooses to leave you here.”
+
+The three little bears cubs had disappeared, but as soon as the Father
+Bear carried Teddy around the hill of ice he saw what had become of
+them. They were sitting with the Mother Bear at the door of a cave. One
+of them was sucking its paws, and the other two were talking as fast as
+they could. The Mother Bear looked worried and anxious.
+
+“What’s all this Dumpy and Sprawley are telling me?” she said. “And
+what’s that you have on your back?”
+
+“It’s an ice-fairy,” growled old Father Bear, “and the Counterpane
+Fairy wants us to take care of it for a while. You don’t mind, my dear,
+do you?”
+
+“Oh dear, dear!” said the Mother Bear, “I suppose not, but what shall
+we give it to eat, and how shall we keep it?”
+
+“Oh, it will do just the other cubs do, I suppose,” said the Father
+Bear. Then turning to Teddy he said, “You eat meat, don’t you?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered Teddy, timidly.
+
+“Then that’s all right,” said the Father Bear. “Here, you children,
+take this fairy off and let him play with you.”
+
+Two of the little bears, Fatty (who was the one who had been sucking
+his paws) and Dumpy, were delighted to have a new playmate, and they
+told him he might come over and slide down their hill, but the third
+one, Sprawley, scowled and grumbled. “Another one to be eating up our
+meat,” he said. “Just as if there weren’t enough of us without.”
+
+Still he went over with them to the icehill and they all began sliding
+down.
+
+After a while Sprawley said: “I know a great deal nicer hill than this
+one. It’s just a little farther on; come on and I’ll show it to you.”
+
+“Oh,” said Fatty, “but suppose we should see some ice-mermen?”
+
+“Pooh!” said Sprawley, “I ain’t afraid. It’s a great deal nicer than
+this. Come on.”
+
+So the three little bears and Teddy trotted on to another hill, and it
+really was much longer and steeper than the other; it went down almost
+to the edge of the sea.
+
+They had slidden down it only a few times when Dumpy cried out: “Oh!
+look! look! There are some ice-mermen and they are making faces at me.”
+
+There they were, sure enough, looking over the edge of the ice, — ugly
+little gray things with mouths like fishes, and they were making faces,
+and presently they began to sing, —
+
+“Bear cubs! Bear cubs! Look at their toes;
+Look at their ears and their hair and their nose.
+The great big walrus will surely come
+To eat up the bear cubs and give us some.”
+
+
+Dumpy growled at them, though he was frightened, but Fatty began to
+cry.
+
+Just then one of the mermen sent a piece of ice sliding across at them,
+and it hit Fatty’s paws and upset her. She was so fat that she rolled
+over and over before she could get up. Dumpy ran to her, and as soon as
+she was on her feet again they began galloping toward home as fast as
+they could, followed by Sprawley and Teddy.
+
+As they ran along Teddy saw that Sprawley was shaking all over, and he
+thought it was because he was afraid, until he caught up to him; then
+he saw that he was laughing. “What are you laughing at?” he asked, but
+Sprawley only showed his teeth and growled in answer.
+
+When they reached the cave and told the Mother Bear about the mermen
+she scolded them well for going so near the edge of the water, and said
+it was time for them to go to bed. Father Bear was going on a hunt the
+next day, and he was going to let the cubs go part of the way with him,
+so they must have a good rest.
+
+The Mother Bear gave them each their share of seal meat, and then she
+went into the cave.
+
+“Oh, Fatty,” said Sprawley, “just look behind you and see if you don’t
+see a merman.”
+
+Fatty turned her head, but there was nothing there. When she looked
+back again she burst into a loud whine. “Ou-u-u! ou-u-u-u!” she cried,
+“Sprawley stole my nicest piece of meat, so he did. Ou-u-u!”
+
+Out shuffled Mother Bear in a hurry. “You naughty cub,” she cried,
+aiming a blow at Sprawley’s ear. But quick as a wink Sprawley slipped
+behind Dumpy, and it was upon Dumpy that the blow fell.
+
+And now Dumpy joined in with his sister. “Ou-u-u!” he cried.
+
+“There, there!” cried the poor Mother Bear, “don’t you cry any more and
+I’ll give you each an extra piece of meat.”
+
+So they stopped crying and ate their suppers contentedly, and after
+that they all went to bed, and the little cubs had hardly lain down
+before they were fast asleep.
+
+Teddy did not go to sleep, however. He lay looking at the ice-roof of
+the cave and thinking how strange it was to be there. Presently he
+heard the Mother Bear say very softly, “Husband, husband, are you
+awake?”
+
+“Yes, I am,” said the Father Bear. “What do you want?”
+
+The Mother Bear sighed. “I don’t know how it is, husband,” she said,
+“but I never had a cub like Sprawley before. He is so naughty and
+mischievous that he keeps his little brother and sister whining all the
+time.”
+
+“You ought to box him,” said the Father Bear.
+
+“That’s all very well,” said the Mother Bear, “but when I try to box
+him he slips behind the others and pushes them forward, and he is so
+quick that twice I have boxed Dumpy instead of him by mistake.”
+
+The Father Bear grunted and they were silent for a while, but presently
+the Mother Bear began again, more softly than ever. “Do you know,
+husband, sometimes I wonder whether Sprawley can really be my cub. If I
+could only count them I might find out. If there were only one and one
+I could count them, but there are more than one and one.”
+
+“Well,” said Father Bear, “I should think that would be easy. Let’s
+see. There’s Dumpy, and he’s one, and Fatty, and she’s one, and
+Sprawley, and he’s one. And now how many does that make?”
+
+“Oh dear!” said the Mother Bear, “Don’t ask me. My head’s all of a
+whirl already.”
+
+“Then you’d better go to sleep, my dear,” said her husband. “The next
+thing you know you’ll be having a headache to-morrow. You think too
+much.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Mother Bear, sighing, “That’s so; I suppose I do think
+too much, but then I can’t help it. I always was thinking ever since I
+was a cub. It’s the way I’m made. Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night,” said the Father Bear, and then they, too, went to sleep.
+
+Teddy seemed to be the only one left awake. Dumpy kept crowding up
+against him and snoring with his nose close to Teddy’s ear. Teddy
+pushed him once or twice, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.
+Once he poked him so hard that the little bear gave a snort and stopped
+snoring for a while, but soon he began again.
+
+But after all Teddy found he was not the only one in the cave who was
+not asleep. Sprawley, who was lying on the other side of Fatty, had
+began to stir and sit up; he looked about at the sleeping bears, and
+then very quietly began to edge himself toward the mouth of the cave.
+
+Once the Mother Bear gave a low growl in her sleep and Sprawley stopped
+still to listen, but she didn’t waken.
+
+Teddy wondered what Sprawley was going to do, and so, as soon as the
+cub had disappeared through the mouth of the cave, he too crawled over
+to the opening.
+
+When he looked out he saw Sprawley shuffling over the fields of ice in
+the distance, and already quite far away, so, led by his curiosity,
+Teddy, too, crept out of the cave and set off running after the bear
+cub.
+
+He ran on and on until he was quite close to Sprawley, and then he saw
+the cub pause at the edge of a strip of open water, and turn to look
+behind him to make sure that he was not followed. He did not see Teddy,
+for the fairy had hidden quickly behind a block of ice.
+
+Sprawley turned toward the water again and gave a long, quavering cry
+that sounded like a call. He listened, but everything was silent except
+for the rumbling and cracking of the ice in the distance. Again he
+called, and this time there was an answering cry, and another, and
+another. Sprawley stood up and waved his paws, and then Teddy saw that
+the open water was dotted with heads of ice-mermen; there must have
+been ten or twelve of them at least.
+
+They swam over to where Sprawley stood, and climbing out on the ice
+they seemed to be welcoming him, hopping and sliding about, and pulling
+at his hair and claws. Now that Teddy saw them quite close they were
+uglier than ever, with goggle eyes, and rough, fishy-looking skins.
+
+They all sat on the edge of the ice, and now and then one of them would
+dive off, to reappear again, all wet and glistening, and then it would
+climb up and sit on the ice again in a row with the others. They all
+talked together, and their voices were so queer and husky that Teddy
+could not understand what they were saying at first. At last he made
+out that they were asking Sprawley about him, —where he had come from,
+and how.
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you how he came,” said Sprawley, and all the mermen
+stopped to listen. Sprawley, too, was silent for a moment, and then he
+said in a low, impressive voice, “The Counterpane Fairy brought him.”
+
+There was a long, quavering cry from the mermen, and several of them
+dived off into the water and did not reappear again for some minutes;
+when they did, their faces were all wrinkled up with anxiety.
+
+They climbed up onto the edge of the ice and sat there blinking at the
+sky for a while in silence; then one of them said in a trembling voice,
+“Well, we haven’t been doing anything but just frightening the bear
+cubs a little.”
+
+“How about knocking Fatty down with a piece of ice?” asked Sprawley,
+derisively.
+
+“Scritchy did that,” cried all the mermen but one. “We didn’t do it.
+Scritchy did that.”
+
+The merman who hadn’t spoken, and who was Scritchy, still did not say a
+word. He looked at the others with his goggle eyes and then he tumbled
+off into the water and swam away as fast as he could and did not come
+back any more.
+
+All the other mermen looked after him in silence until he had
+disappeared; then one of them said in an awe-struck voice, “It’s bad
+for you, Sprawley, ain’t it? Just think what you’ve been doing.”
+
+“Pooh,” said Sprawley, pretending he was not frightened, “what do I
+care? I can fix it all right.”
+
+“How?” asked all the mermen together.
+
+“Well, listen, and I’ll tell you,” said Sprawley. “To-morrow Father and
+Mother Bear are going hunting, and all of us little cubs are to go with
+them. I suppose this strange fairy cub will go with us, and when we
+stop to rest I’ll get him away from the others and near the edge of the
+water. You must come under the ice and break off the piece he is
+standing on, and float him far, far away toward the South until he
+melts.”
+
+“Yes, yes! we’ll do it,” cried all the mermen jumping about and
+shouting. Then they turned to Sprawley. “Come,” they cried, “let’s have
+a game in the water before you go back.”
+
+“That I will,” said Sprawley, and with that what should he do but strip
+off his bear-skin just as though it were a coat, and there he was,
+nothing more nor less than a merman who had been dressed up in an old
+skin, pretending to be a bear cub.
+
+Sprawley and all the other mermen dived off into the water and began
+splashing and shrieking and pulling at each other and getting farther
+and farther away.
+
+“All the same, I don’t think you’ll float me off,” said Teddy to
+himself.
+
+Very quietly he crept to where the bear-skin lay on the ice, and taking
+out his knife he cut a long slit up the back of it. Then not waiting
+for the mermen to come back he hurried home again over the ice to the
+bears’ cave, and crawling in he laid himself down again between the
+sleeping cubs.
+
+The little bears were beginning to stir themselves and the Mother Bear
+was yawning and stretching when Sprawley came sneaking into the cave
+again.
+
+“Why! why!” said the Mother Bear, “where have you been?”
+
+“I ain’t been anywhere,” said Sprawley. “I just thought I heard a
+sea-lion roaring and I went out to see.”
+
+“Well, there’s no use your going to sleep again,” said the Father Bear,
+“for we have to go a long ways to-day, and it’s time we were getting
+ready to start now.”
+
+With that he shuffled out of the cave, followed by the Mother Bear, and
+stood looking about him. Presently the cubs came out, too, still
+blinking with sleep.
+
+“Oh, Mother!” cried Dumpy, “just look at Sprawley’s back!”
+
+“Why, what’s the matter with it?” asked the Mother Bear.
+
+“There ain’t anything the matter with it,” growled Sprawley, twisting
+his head round and trying to see.
+
+“Yes, there is too!” cried Fatty. “Oh my! Sprawley’s splitting hisself
+all down the back.”
+
+“Why! why!” cried the Father Bear, “what’s this?” He shuffled over and
+looked at Sprawley’s back, and then without a word he began to tear and
+pull at the bear-skin. In another minute he had it off, and there stood
+the merman shivering and blinking at them with his mouth open like a
+gasping fish.
+
+“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried the Mother Bear, turning whiter than ever.
+“He’s not my cub after all,” and she sat down and began to whine and
+cry. But Father Bear gave a growl, and rising on his hind legs he
+fetched the merman a cuff that sent him tumbling head over heels across
+the ice.
+
+Father Bear was after him, but before he could reach him the merman was
+up and running for the open strip of water in the distance. Father Bear
+chased him the whole way; sometimes he caught him and gave him a cuff
+that sent him flying, but at last the merman reached the water and
+dived into it. He must have had a sore head for days afterward,
+however.
+
+When the Father Bear came back again, he was panting and growling.
+“There,” said he, “I guess that’s the last time any of the mermen will
+try to play their tricks on us. Come, come,” he went on, “it’s time we
+were off for our hunting.”
+
+But the Mother Bear only shook her head. She had been doing nothing
+since she saw that Sprawley was an ice-merman but sit and rock herself
+backward and forward and whine. “I couldn’t go, my dear; I couldn’t
+indeed,” she said. “I’m all of a tremble now to think how that dreadful
+merman has been playing with Fatty and Dumpy day after day and I never
+knew it.”
+
+“Then I’ll go by myself,” said Father Bear, gruffly, “and leave the
+children home with you. But you can go, Fairy,” he said to Teddy. “I’ll
+carry you on my back if you like, and maybe you’ll see me catch a young
+walrus. I suppose it was you who split him down the back, as the
+Counterpane Fairy brought you.”
+
+“Yes, sir, it was,” said Teddy, timidly; “but I’m afraid I can’t go
+with you; I’m afraid I’m going back,” —for the bears, the fields of
+ice, the far-off green water, were all wavering and growing misty
+before his sight. Faintly he heard the voices of the bear cubs: “Owie!
+owie! don’t go away”; for they had grown fond of him the day before.
+
+Then their voices died away. He was back in the old familiar room with
+the Counterpane Fairy perched upon his knees, and a bunch of snowdrops
+in the vase beside the bed. The door opened and his mother stood
+holding the knob in her hand and speaking to Hannah outside, and in
+that moment the Counterpane Fairy was gone.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER SIXTH.
+THE RUBY RING
+
+
+The next day, in spite of the doctor’s promises, Teddy was not allowed
+to sit up.
+
+It was a raw, blustering day, and every feeling of spring seemed gone
+from the air; the wind rattled at the windows, and Hannah built up the
+fire until it roared.
+
+Teddy did not feel much disappointed at not being allowed to sit up,
+for Harriett came over with her paint-box, and they began coloring the
+pictures in some old magazines that mamma gave them; the bed was
+littered with the pages.
+
+After a while mamma left them and went down into the kitchen to bake a
+cake.
+
+“I wish I had brought my best apron over,” said Harriett, “for then I
+could have stayed for dinner if you wanted me to.”
+
+“Why can’t you stay anyhow?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Oh, I can’t,” said Harriett. “I must go to dancing-class right after
+dinner, and I have to wear my apron with the embroidered ruffles.”
+
+“Harriett, why don’t you go home and get it, and then perhaps you could
+have diner up here with me; wouldn’t you like that?”
+
+“Yes, but maybe Aunt Alice doesn’t want me to stay.”
+
+“Yes, she does,” said Teddy. “I know she does, because she said she was
+so glad to have you come and amuse me.”
+
+“Well, I’ll go home and ask my mother. I don’t know whether she’ll let
+me.”
+
+“You won’t stay long, will you?”
+
+“No, I won’t,” promised Harriett. Then she put on her jacket and hat
+and ran down-stairs.
+
+Teddy went on with his painting by himself for a while, but it seemed
+to him Harriett was gone a long time. He called his mother once, and
+she came to the foot of the stairs and told him she couldn’t come up
+just yet.
+
+Then Teddy began thinking of the Counterpane Fairy, and the stories she
+had shown him. He wondered if she wouldn’t come to see him to-day. She
+always came when he was lonely, and he was quite sure he was getting
+lonely now. Yes, he knew he was.
+
+“Well,” said a little voice just back of the counterpane hill, “it’s
+not quite so steep to-day, and that’s a comfort.” There was the little
+fairy just appearing above the tops of his knees, — brown hood, brown
+cloak, brown staff, and all. She sat down with her staff in her hand
+and nodded to him, smiling. “Good-morning,” she said.
+
+“Good-morning,” said Teddy. “Mrs. Fairy, I was wondering whether you
+wouldn’t like it if I kept my knees down, and then there wouldn’t be
+any hill.”
+
+“No,” said the fairy, “I like to be up high so that I can look about
+me, only it’s hard climbing sometimes. Now, how about a story? Would
+you like to see one to-day?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Teddy. “Indeed, I would.”
+
+“Then which square will you choose? Make haste, for I haven’t much
+time.”
+
+“I think I’ll take that red one,” said Teddy.
+
+“Very good,” said the fairy, and then she began to count.
+
+As she counted, the red square spread and glowed until it seemed to
+Teddy that he was wrapped in a mist of ruddy light. Through it he heard
+the voice of the Counterpane Fairy counting on and on, and as she
+counted he heard, with her voice, another sound, —at first very
+faintly, then more and more clearly: clink-clank! clink-clank!
+clink-clank! It reminded him a little of the ticking of the clock on
+the mantle, only it was more metallic.
+
+“FORTY-NINE!” cried the Counterpane Fairy, clapping her hands.
+
+
+And now the sound rang loud and clear in Teddy’s ears; it was the
+beating of hammers upon anvils.
+
+When Teddy looked about him he was standing on a road that ran along
+the side of a mountain. All along this road were openings that looked
+like the mouths of caverns, and from these openings poured the
+ceaseless sound of beating, and a ruddy glow that reddened all the air
+and sky.
+
+It all seemed very familiar to Teddy, and he had a feeling that he had
+seen it before.
+
+Stepping to the nearest cavern he looked in, and there he saw the whole
+inside of the mountain was hollowed out into forges that opened into
+each other be means of rocky arches. In every forge were little dwarfs
+dressed in leather and hammering at pieces of red-hot iron that lay on
+the anvils.
+
+As Teddy stood looking in he was so tall that his head almost touched
+the top of the doorway. He was dressed in a long red cloak, and under
+that he wore a robe fastened about the waist with a girdle of rubies
+that shone and sparkled in the light; upon his hand was a ruby ring.
+The stone of the ring was turned inward toward the palm, but it was so
+bright that the light shone through his fingers, and he drew his cloak
+over his hand that the dwarfs might not see it, for it was not yet time
+for them to know that he was King Fireheart.
+
+After a while the iron that the little men were beating had to be put
+in the fire again to heat, and then they turned and looked at Teddy.
+
+“Good-day,” said he.
+
+“Good-day,” answered the dwarfs, staring hard at him.
+
+“What are you making there?” asked Teddy.
+
+“A link,” answered the dwarfs.
+
+“A link!” said Teddy. “What for?”
+
+“For a chain,” answered the dwarfs, and then the iron was hot and they
+took it out again and laid it on the anvil. Clink-clank! clink-clank!
+clink-clank! went their hammers.
+
+Teddy watched them at their work for a while, and then he went on to
+the next forge, and there it was the same thing — more little dwarfs
+hammering away at their anvils as if their lives depended on it.
+
+“Good-day,” said Teddy, as soon as they paused to heat the iron.
+
+“Good-day,” said the dwarfs.
+
+“What are you making there?” asked Teddy.
+
+“A link,” answered the dwarfs.
+
+“What for?” said Teddy.
+
+“For a chain,” answered the dwarfs, and then they set to work again.
+
+Teddy went on and on through the forges, and in every one of them were
+little dwarfs hammering away on links.
+
+When he came to the last forge of all, they were just finishing a link,
+and as they threw it into a tank of water a cloud of steam rose, almost
+hiding them from view. They were so busy that they paid no attention to
+Teddy when he spoke. “Make haste! Make haste!” they cried to each
+other. “It is growing late and she will soon be here.”
+
+In a great hurry the dwarfs caught up the link from the water and laid
+it on the anvil again, and then they all stood back from it. Every
+noise has ceased through all the forges, and the dwarfs were waiting in
+breathless stillness as though for something to happen.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence, Teddy heard a faint tinkling as though of
+icicles struck lightly together, and at the same moment he saw that a
+woman all in white had entered the forge down at the other end. Her
+dress shone with all different colors, just as icicles do when they
+hang in the sunlight, and as the light of the fire caught it here and
+there, it almost looked as though it were on fire. Her hair was very
+black, and she wore a crown.
+
+She stepped up to the anvil that was in the forge and laid her hand
+upon it. She was too far away for Teddy to see what she did, but there
+was a clink as of something breaking, and a low wail arose from the
+dwarfs that stood near by. Then she passed on to the next anvil, and to
+the next, and to the next, and at each one she paused and touched the
+link that lay upon it, and always at that there was a clink, and a wail
+arose from the dwarfs.
+
+At last she came to the very forge where Teddy was, but he had drawn
+back behind the stone archway and she did not see him. Gliding to the
+anvil, she stretched out her white finger and laid it upon the link
+that the dwarfs had made, and instantly, as soon as she touched it, the
+iron flew into pieces with a clink.
+
+The dwarfs burst into a low wail, but the woman with the crown struck
+her hands together and stamped her foot in a rage. “Fools! fools!” she
+cried. “Not yet one link that will not fly into pieces at a touch. But
+you shall make the chain, though it should take your very hearts to do
+it.”
+
+Then, still scowling until her beautiful face was like a thunder-cloud,
+and without a single glance at the trembling dwarfs, she glided from
+the forge and was gone.
+
+The dwarf who held the pincers drew his arm across his forehead to wipe
+off the sweat. “Come,” said he, “let us set to work, for now it’s all
+to be done over again.”
+
+“But tell me first,” said Teddy, “what does this all mean, and who is
+this woman with a crown who comes and breaks your links with a touch as
+soon as you have finished them?”
+
+“Ah! that is a long, sad story,” said the dwarf who held the pincers.
+
+“Yes, it is a long, sad story,” echoed the others. “You tell him,
+Leatherkin,” they added.
+
+“Well,” said Leatherkin, sitting down on a rock that lay close by,
+“it’s this way. This mountain where we live is only one of many that
+are called the Fire Mountains, because their rocks are so red, and
+because they are all full of forges. Here we dwarfs used to live
+happily enough, for our good King Fireheart was so rich and strong that
+no one dared to make war on us, and we were left in peace to do what we
+would.
+
+“King Fireheart, however, was not contented, for he wanted to see the
+world, so one day he set out on a journey, no one knew whither, leaving
+the country in the charge of his foster-brother.
+
+“While he was away the Ice-Queen came with all her white spearsmen and
+attacked the country and conquered it. Then she set us all to work, for
+she knew that in all the world there were no such smiths as the dwarfs
+of the Fire King’s country, and not until we have forged her the magic
+chain that binds all but one’s self will she set us free to go about
+out own affairs again.
+
+“That is why we are all working to forge the links, and if we could but
+make one that would stand so much as a touch of her finger we would
+have hopes of making it, but so far not one has been made but what
+flies into pieces at her lightest touch.
+
+“But there,” he added; “we must set to work, for the days are all too
+short for what we have to do.”
+
+“Wait a bit,” said Teddy, “I should like to have a stroke at that chain
+myself. Will you lend me a hammer and let me try?”
+
+“No, no,” cried the dwarfs, shaking their heads. “We have no time to
+waste in lending out hammers and anvil.”
+
+“Look!” said Teddy, taking off his ruby girdle and holding it out to
+them. “You shall have this if you will let me try.”
+
+The dwarfs’ eyes glittered, and they took the girdle and all crowded
+around to look and handle it, for they had never seen such fine rubies
+before, not even down in the middle of the earth; and at last they told
+Teddy that they would lend him their hammers awhile in exchange for the
+ruby girdle. “Though what can you do with them?” they said, “for look
+at your hands; they are white and smooth, and not hairy and strong like
+ours.”
+
+“Never you mind,” said Teddy, “for sometimes white, smooth hands can do
+the work that others can’t,” and he took one of their hammers in his
+hand as he spoke.
+
+“What will you have to work with?” they asked.
+
+“Oh, anything at all,” said Teddy, “if it is no more than an old nail,
+so that it is something to begin with.”
+
+The dwarfs laughed, and picking up an old nail that was on the floor
+they laid it upon the anvil.
+
+Then Teddy raised the hammer, and the ruby of the ring he wore throbbed
+and burned until his hand was hot, and his arm was so strong that the
+hammer was like a feather in his grasp.
+
+As he beat and turned the nail he sang, and it seemed to him that the
+fire sang with him, clear and thin, and sounding like the voice of the
+Counterpane Fairy,—
+
+“Hammer and turn!
+The fire must burn,
+The coals must glow,
+The bellows blow.
+
+Beat, good hammer, loud and fast;
+So the chain will be made at last.
+
+“Clankety-clink!
+We forge the link.
+My hammer bold,
+This chain must hold.
+
+The snow shall melt, the ice fly fast,
+For the magic chain is wrought at last.”
+
+
+With these words Teddy threw down the hammer and lifted the chain he
+had made, and it was as thin as a hair, as light as a breath, and yet
+so strong that no power on earth could break it.
+
+The dwarfs sprang forward with a shout and caught the chain in their
+crooked fingers. “Wonderful! wonderful!” they cried. “It is indeed the
+magic chain that we have been trying to make for all these years. Who
+are you, wonderful stranger, for there is no smith among all the dwarfs
+who can do what you have done?”
+
+Then without a word Teddy raised his hand, and held it up with the palm
+turned toward them so that they saw the ruby in his ring, and when they
+saw it they shouted again in their wonder and joy. “It is King
+Fireheart himself come back to rule the country!”
+
+Then all the dwarfs, even from the farthest forges, came running up and
+gathered about the archway of the forge where Teddy stood, and when
+they saw that it was indeed King Fireheart they shouted and leaped and
+threw their caps up into the air.
+
+When they had grown quieter Teddy bade them take him to the Ice-Queen,
+so all the dwarfs led him out, and up the mountain, on and on, until
+they came to a great castle built of ice, but ruddy with the cold light
+of the aurora borealis that shone behind it.
+
+They went into the hall, past the rows of white spearsmen, and when the
+spearsmen would have stopped them the dwarfs told them that they were
+carrying the magic chain that binds all but one’s self to the Queen,
+and so they let the little men pass on, but all the while Teddy kept
+the ruby ring hidden under his cloak.
+
+At last they came to the great chamber, where the Queen sat on a
+magnificent throne of ice, and when she saw the crowd she started to
+her feet. “Have you brought it? Have you brought it?” she cried
+eagerly. “Have you brought me the magic chain?”
+
+“Yes,” shouted the dwarfs all together, “we have brought it.”
+
+Then they stood still, and Teddy went on up the steps along.
+
+“Where is it?” asked the Queen, and she stretched out her hands.
+
+“It is here,” said Teddy. Very slowly he drew it out from under his
+cloak, and then suddenly he threw it over her. “And now take it!” he
+cried.
+
+It was in vain that the Queen struggled and cried; the more she strove,
+the closer the chain drew about her, for it was a magic chain. At last
+she stood still, panting. “Who are you?” she asked.
+
+Then Teddy raised his hand, holding it open so that she could see the
+ruby. “I am King Fireheart,” he cried; “and now take your own real
+shape, wicked enchantress that you are.”
+
+At these words the black-browed Queen gave a cry that changed, even as
+she uttered it, to a croak, and a moment after she was nothing but a
+great black raven that spread its wings, and flew away over the heads
+of the dwarfs, out of the window and on out of sight.
+
+Then Teddy turned and walked out of the great ice-chamber and down the
+hall, followed in silence by the dwarfs. As he went, the spearsmen
+started forward to lay hands upon him, but as soon as they saw the ruby
+ring they stood, every man stiffened just as he was, some leaning
+forward with outstretched arm, some with their spears lifted, some with
+their mouths open, but all of them turned to ice.
+
+When Teddy and the dwarfs had reached the mountain road again they
+turned and looked back toward the castle.
+
+A warm south wind was blowing, and the aurora borealis had faded away.
+Already the castle was beginning to melt; the spires and turrets were
+softening and dripping down. There was a warm red light over
+everything, like the light of the rising sun.
+
+“And now,” cried the dwarfs, “will your Majesty come up to your own
+royal castle?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Teddy, “I will come.”
+
+
+“Quick! quick!” cried the Counterpane Fairy. “It’s time to come back.”
+
+Teddy was at home once more. There was the flowered furniture, and the
+fire burning red upon the hearth. “Tick-tock! tick-tock! tick-tock!”
+said the clock.
+
+“I must go,” cried the fairy, hastily, “for I heard your little cousin
+opening and shutting the side door.”
+
+“Oh, wait!” cried Teddy. “Won’t you wait and let her see you too?” But
+the fairy was already disappearing behind the counterpane hill. All he
+could see was the top of her pointed hood. Then that too disappeared.
+The door was thrown open and Harriett came running in bringing a breath
+of fresh out-of-doors air with her. Her cheeks were red, and she looked
+very pretty in her embroidered apron and pink ribbons.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTH.
+THE RAINBOW CHILDREN.
+
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, and everything was very still.
+
+Teddy had been allowed to sit up that morning for the first time since
+he had been ill. He had put on the little blue dressing-gown that mamma
+had made for him, and she was so funny about getting him into it, and
+wheeling the chair over to the window, that Teddy had laughed and
+laughed.
+
+After that he sat at the window looking out and watching the chickens
+in the yard below, and the people going along the street.
+
+Teddy’s mamma was going to church, but his father stayed home with the
+little boy, and told him stories, and drew pictures with a blue pencil
+on a writing-pad; pictures of “David Killing Goliath,” and of “Daniel
+in the Lions’ Den.”
+
+Then he drew a picture of the house in the real country where he and
+mamma and Teddy were going to live some time —a house with a barn, and
+horses, and cows, and pigs, and a pony that Teddy could ride when he
+came in to town to school.
+
+The morning flew by so quickly that the little boy was surprised when
+mamma came back from church, and said it was almost time for luncheon.
+
+She looked at the pictures that papa had drawn, and smiled when Teddy
+told her about them; but very soon she began to talk seriously with
+papa. She told him she had stopped in at Mrs. McFinney’s on her way
+home, and that she had been wondering whether something couldn’t be
+done for little Ellen McFinney’s lameness. She felt so sorry for her.
+
+Papa said the child ought to be sent to a hospital, and he thought that
+if that were done she could be cured. Mamma said that she thought so
+too; but that someone had been talking to little Ellen, and frightened
+her so that she cried whenever the hospital was talked of, and her
+mother would not send her unless she felt willing to go.
+
+Then mamma spoke of how lonely it must be for the little girl there in
+the house by herself all the day, while her mother was out at work,
+with so little to amuse her.
+
+“Mamma,” said Teddy, “why can’t little Ellen have some of my books to
+amuse her— some I had when I was sick? Because, you know, I’m well now,
+and don’t need them any more.”
+
+“That’s a very good idea,” said mamma, looking pleased. “You may choose
+the ones you will give her, and perhaps papa will leave them with her
+when he goes out for a walk this afternoon.”
+
+“Well,” cried Teddy, eagerly, “I think I’ll give her the _Ali Baba_
+book and _Robinson Crusoe_, and I think, maybe, I’ll give her _Little
+Golden Locks_ too.”
+
+Mamma brought the books, and they tied them up in a neat package, and
+just as they finished there was a little rattle of china outside the
+door, and in came Hannah with Teddy’s luncheon, and a great yellow
+orange that Aunt Pauline had sent him.
+
+After luncheon mamma made Teddy lie down for a while to rest. The
+Venetian shutters were drawn, so that all the room was dimly green, and
+then mamma and papa went out and left him alone.
+
+Teddy lay there for what seemed to him a long time. The house was very
+still, and the afternoon sun shone in through the slats of the shutters
+in golden chinks and lines.
+
+Teddy wondered where mamma was, and why she didn’t come back, for it
+seemed to him that he had been alone almost all the afternoon, though
+really it had not been for long.
+
+Presently he heard someone humming cheerfully back of the counterpane
+hill, and as soon as he heard it he felt sure that the Counterpane
+Fairy must be coming.
+
+Sure enough in a few minutes she appeared at the top and stood looking
+down at him with a pleasant smile. “Oh, Mrs. Fairy, I knew that was
+you!” cried Teddy.
+
+“Did you?” said the fairy, sitting down on top of his knees. “And then
+did you think, ‘Now I shall see another story’?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Teddy, eagerly. “I hoped you would show me one.”
+
+“Then I suppose I’ll have to,” said the fairy. “And what square shall
+it be this time?”
+
+“There’s one close by you,” said Teddy, “and it’s most every color,
+like a rainbow. Will you show me that story?”
+
+“Yes,” said the fairy, “I’ll show you that. Now fix your eyes on it.”
+Then she began to count.
+
+“FORTY-NINE!” she cried.
+
+
+Teddy and little Ellen McFinney were running along, hand in hand, over
+a rainbow that stretched across the shining sky like a bridge. The
+clouds above them shone like opals, and far, far below was the green
+world, with shining rivers, and houses that looked no larger than
+walnuts.
+
+“Can’t we run fast?” said Teddy. “I think we go as fast as an express
+train; don’t you, Ellen?”
+
+“I know a faster way to go than this,” said the little girl.
+
+“Do you?”
+
+“Yes, I do. Let go of my hand, and I’ll show you.” She drew her hand
+away from Teddy, and very slowly she leaned back against the air as
+though it were a pillow, then she gave herself a little push with her
+feet, and away she floated so lightly and easily that Teddy could
+hardly keep up with her.
+
+“Oh, Ellen!” cried Teddy, “will you teach me to do that?”
+
+“Yes, I will,” said Ellen. So she stood up and showed Teddy how to take
+a long breath, and how to push himself, and then he found he could do
+it quite well, and when Ellen began to float too, they could go along
+together hand in hand just as they had before.
+
+Suddenly a thought crossed Teddy’s mind, and he cried, “Why, Ellen, I
+thought you were lame!”
+
+“So I am,” said the little girl.
+
+“But you can run and float.”
+
+“Yes, I know, but that’s because I’m dreaming.”
+
+“Why, no, Ellen, you can’t be dreaming,” said Teddy, “for I’m here
+too.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know,” said Ellen, “but I think I’m dreaming, because
+I’ve often dreamed this way before.”
+
+Teddy thought of this for a little while, but it was not pleasant to
+think that he was in a dream. After a while he said: “Ellen, don’t you
+know, if you’re lame you ought to go to a hospital? My mamma says so,
+and my papa says so too.”
+
+An ugly expression came into Ellen’s face. “That’s all you know about
+it,” she cried. “You don’t catch me going to a hospital. Why, I heard
+of a girl that went to a hospital and—”
+
+She was interrupted by a soft burst of laughter, and looking about
+Teddy saw that he and she had floated right into midst of a group of
+little children, who were running along the rainbow bridge. They were
+all such pretty little children, with soft shining faces and bare feet,
+but they did not quite look like any children that Teddy had ever seen
+before.
+
+Each little child carried in its hand a bunch of flowers, and they were
+such flowers as the little boy had never dreamed of. Some of them moved
+on their stalks, opening and closing their petals softly like the wings
+of butterflies, some shone like jewels, and some seemed to change and
+throb as if with a hidden pulse of life.
+
+Ellen, who had stopped floating, caught Teddy by the coat and hung back
+timidly when she saw the children, but Teddy spoke to the one nearest
+to him. “Where did you get your flowers?” he asked.
+
+“From the garden at the other end of the rainbow,” said the little
+child, smiling at him.
+
+“Give me one?”
+
+“Oh, no, I can’t!” answered the child, staring at him with big eyes.
+“They’re for someone else.”
+
+“Whom are they for?”
+
+“You can come along and see.”
+
+“Oh, say,” whispered Ellen to Teddy, “let’s go back!” But Teddy
+answered: “No, no! Come on and see where they’re going.” So Ellen
+reluctantly followed him, and they joined the other little children
+journeying along the rainbow.
+
+The strange little children seemed very happy, and they laughed and
+talked together in their soft, clear voices, though Teddy could not
+always understand what they said. He could understand best the little
+boy to whom he had spoken first. Teddy asked him again where they were
+going, and this time the little boy (he seemed to be the captain of the
+band) told him that they were going down to the earth. He said that
+every week they had a holiday, and then they crossed the rainbow
+bridge, and carried the flowers from their flower-beds down to the
+little earth children.
+
+“But _what_ little children?” asked Teddy, curiously.
+
+“Oh, you’ll see!” answered the little boy, laughing, and then he began
+to talk with the others, and Teddy could no longer understand him.
+
+It was not long after this that Teddy saw before him the end of the
+rainbow, and where should it go but right through the window of a great
+square yellow house, set back of a high wall and in the middle of a
+lawn.
+
+“Oh dear! we can’t get to the end of it after all,” cried Teddy, and
+the next thing he knew the little children were walking through the
+window just as if nothing were there, and he and Ellen were following
+them.
+
+“Where are we?” asked Ellen, looking about her, half frightened and yet
+curious.
+
+“I can’t think,” said Teddy. “Seems as if I knew, but I can’t think.”
+
+They were in a long, bare, clean room, and on each side of it were rows
+of little white beds, and in each bed lay or sat a little child. A few
+of the children were asleep, most of them were awake, but all looked
+pale and thin. Here and there at the sides of the beds grown-up people
+were sitting, sometimes showing the children pictures or books, and
+sometimes reading to them.
+
+The children from the rainbow walked slowly up the aisle between the
+row of beds, and, strangely enough, no one seemed to look at them or
+pay the least attention, any more than if they had not been there, and
+at last Teddy began to believe that they could not see them.
+
+Often the little strange children stopped to smooth a pillow or to
+softly stroke the cheek or hand of one of the little earth children.
+
+Here and there one would linger behind the others, by some bed, and
+after a moment would lay its bunch of flowers on the pillow. Then the
+little child in the bed would turn its head and smile, even if it were
+asleep, and its face would shine as if with some inward happiness. The
+whole room seemed filled with the perfume of flowers, and Teddy
+wondered that no one paid any attention to it.
+
+At last they came to a bed where a little child was lying fast asleep,
+and a woman was sitting beside the child and fanning it. Suddenly its
+eyes opened, and the moment they turned toward the rainbow children,
+Teddy knew that it saw them.
+
+It lay looking for a moment and then it smiled and feebly tried to wave
+its hand. “What is it, dear?” asked the woman, bending over the child,
+but it paid no attention to her, for it was gazing at the rainbow
+children.
+
+“Oh, he sees us! he sees us!” they cried, clapping their hands
+joyfully. “He’ll be coming across the rainbow soon.”
+
+Then the rainbow children gathered about the bed and began talking to
+the child, but Teddy could not understand what they said to it. The
+little child on the bed seemed to understand them though, and it smiled
+and tried to nod its head.
+
+“Come soon! Come soon!” cried the little children, waving their hands
+to it as they moved away, and the eyes of the child on the bed followed
+them wistfully, as though it were eager to follow.
+
+Teddy and Ellen still went with the other little children, and a moment
+after they were out on the rainbow bridge again, high up above the
+world, but they were alone, for the little strange children were gone.
+
+Ellen stood still and drew a long breath. “Oh! wasn’t that lovely?” she
+sighed. “I wonder where it was!”
+
+“I know where it was!” cried Teddy suddenly. “I remember now, for I saw
+a picture of it in one of papa’s magazines. That was a hospital,
+Ellen.”
+
+“A hospital!” cried the little girl.
+
+“Yes, a hospital.”
+
+Ellen did not say anything for some time, but at last she drew another
+deep breath. “Well, if that’s a hospital I shouldn’t mind going to a
+place like that,” she said.
+
+The rainbow had faded away, and Teddy was back in the great high-post
+bedstead again, with the silk coverlet drawn up over his knees, and the
+Counterpane Fairy still sitting on top of the hill. Teddy lay looking
+at her for a while in silence. “Mrs. Fairy, was that a true story like
+the others?” he asked her at last.
+
+“How should I know?” asked the fairy. “Do I look as though I knew
+anything about rainbow children? You’d better ask Ellen McFinney; maybe
+she can tell you.”
+
+“Well, I will,” said Teddy. “I mean to ask her just as soon as ever I’m
+well.”
+
+He did not have to wait for that, however, for the very next day his
+mother told him that little Ellen had at last consented to be taken to
+the hospital, and that perhaps when he saw the little girl again she
+would be able to walk and run about almost like other children.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTH.
+HARRIETT’S DREAM.
+
+
+Teddy had begged mamma to ask Harriett to come over and play with him
+after school, but not to tell her that now he was no longer in bed, so
+when the little girl came running in she was very much surprised. “Why,
+Teddy, you’re well again, aren’t you?” she cried.
+
+“Yes, now I’m well again,” said Teddy “and mamma says we may each have
+a little sponge-cake, and she’s going to let us blow soap-bubbles.
+Would you like to blow soap-bubbles, Harriett?”
+
+“Yes, I guess so,” said Harriett.
+
+So mamma made them a bowl of strong suds, and brought out two pipes,
+and the children played together very happily for quite a time.
+Sometimes they threw the bubbles into the air and tried to blow them up
+to the ceiling; sometimes the children put their pipes close together,
+so that the bubbles they blew were joined in one lopsided globe.
+
+Last of all they set the bowl on a chair, and kneeling beside it put
+their pipes into the suds, and blew and blew until quite a soap-bubble
+castle rose up and touched their noses with wet suds.
+
+Teddy felt a little tired and soapy by that time, so mamma put all the
+things away, and read them some stories from Grimm’s _Fairy Tales_.
+
+After that Harriett said she must go home, and indeed it was almost
+supper-time, so mamma helped her put on her little hat and coat and
+kissed her good-bye.
+
+Teddy was very tired by the time supper was over; he felt quite willing
+to be put to bed, and as soon as he was there he sank into a doze.
+
+When he awoke again he was alone; it was quite dark outside, but mamma
+had set a lamp behind the screen. By its dim light Teddy saw the
+Counterpane Fairy’s brown hood appearing above the hill, and he heard
+her sighing to herself: “Oh dear! oh dear!”
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Fairy!” cried the little boy, almost before she had reached
+the top of the hill, “I’m so glad you’ve come, for I don’t know when
+mamma will be here. Won’t you show me a story?”
+
+“In a minute! in a minute!” said the fairy. “As soon as I can catch my
+breath.”
+
+Teddy was so afraid that mamma would come in that he could hardly wait,
+and when the Counterpane Fairy told him that she was ready and that he
+might choose a square, he made haste and pointed out a silvery gray
+one. Then the fairy began to count. “FORTY-NINE!” she cried.
+
+
+Teddy was walking down a long, smooth, gray road. There was a silvery
+mist all about him, so that it was almost as though he were walking
+through the sky, and the road seemed to begin and end in grayness.
+
+He knew that somewhere behind him lay his home, and that in front was
+the place where he was going, but he did not know what that place was.
+
+At last he reached the edge of a wide gray lake as smooth and as
+shining as glass. Beside him on the beach a little gray bird was
+crouching. “Peet-weet! peet-weet!” cried the little gray bird.
+
+It was so close to Teddy’s feet that it seemed to him that with a
+single movement he could stoop and catch it. Very softly he reached out
+his hand and the little bird did not stir. “Peet-weet! peet-weet!” it
+cried. Suddenly with a quick movement he clutched it. For a moment he
+thought that he felt it in his fingers, all feathery and soft and warm,
+and then the voice of the Counterpane Fairy cried, “Take care! you’re
+rumpling my cloak!”
+
+Teddy dropped the bird as though it had burned him, and there it was
+not a bird at all, but the Counterpane Fairy, who stood smoothing down
+her cloak and frowning. “Oh! I didn’t know that was you; I thought it
+was a bird,” cried Teddy.
+
+“A bird!” cried the fairy. “Do I look like a bird?”
+
+Teddy thought that she did, for her nose was long and thin, and her
+eyes were bright like those of a sparrow, but he did not like to say
+so. All he said was, “I wonder why I came here?” for now he knew that
+this was the place that he had been coming to.
+
+“I suppose you came to see the dreams go by,” said the Counterpane
+Fairy. “I often come for that myself.”
+
+“The dreams go by!” said Teddy. “I don’t know what you mean.”
+
+“Do you see that castle over yonder?” asked the fairy, pointing out
+across the lake. Teddy looked as hard as he could, and after a while he
+thought he did see the shadowy roofs and turrets of a great gray castle
+through the mist.
+
+“I think I do,” he said.
+
+“Well,” said the fairy, “that is where the dreams live, and every
+evening they go sailing past here, on their way to the people who are
+asleep, and I generally come down to see them go by. Look! look! There
+goes one now.”
+
+A little boat, as pale and light as a bubble, was gliding through the
+mist; in it was seated a gray figure, and as it passed the island it
+turned its face toward them and waved a shadowy hand. Presently two
+more boats slid silently by, and then another. “Oh, I know that dream!”
+cried Teddy; “I dreamed that dream once myself.”
+
+Now there was a little pause, and then the dreams began to go past so
+fast that Teddy lost count of them.
+
+At last one of the boats gilded out of the line of the rest, and over
+toward where Teddy was standing, running up smoothly onto the gray
+beach, and out of it hopped a queer, ugly little dream, with pop eyes
+and big hands and feet. As soon as he found himself on shore he cut a
+caper and cracked his shadowy fingers.
+
+“Who are you?” asked Teddy, curiously.
+
+“Oh, I’m just a dream,” said the little figure.
+
+“Well, what are you coming here for?” asked Teddy; “I’m not asleep.”
+
+“I know you’re not,” said the dream, “and I’m not coming to you. I’m
+going to a little girl named Harriett.”
+
+“Oh, I know her!” cried Teddy. “She’s my cousin. But why are you her
+dream? You’re not pretty.”
+
+“I know I’m not pretty,” answered the dream, “and that’s why I’m going
+to her. She was to have had such a pretty dream to-night, but she ate a
+piece of plum-cake before she went to bed, so now I’m going to her
+instead of the other one.”
+
+“What was the other one like?” asked Teddy.
+
+“There it is,” said the dream, pointing toward the boat. And now Teddy
+saw that another gray figure was in it. As he looked, it slowly and
+sorrowfully stepped from the boat and came up the beach toward them. It
+was very beautiful, and in its hand it carried a great bunch of shining
+bubbles, fastened to a stick by parti-colored ribbons, just as Teddy
+had seen Italians carrying balloons, only these bubble-balloons were
+growing and shrinking and changing every moment, just as though they
+were alive.
+
+As she came toward them the ugly dream frowned and shook his hands at
+her. “Go away! Go away!” he cried. “There’s no use your following me
+around this way. You sha’n’t be dreamed to-night.”
+
+“I think you might let me go into her dream with you,” said the pretty
+dream, sorrowfully. “She didn’t know she oughtn’t to eat the
+plum-cake.”
+
+“Well, you sha’n’t,” said the ugly dream. “She ain’t going to have any
+dream but me, and I’m going to look just as ugly as I can. I’m going to
+do this way,” and the naughty little dream put his thumbs in the
+corners of his mouth, drawing it wide, and at the same time drew down
+the outside corners of his eyes with his forefingers, just as Teddy had
+seen the boys at school do sometimes. Then the dream hopped up into the
+air and cut a caper. “Ho, ho!” he cried, “won’t it be fun? You can come
+along and see me frighten her, if you want to.” This last he said to
+Teddy.
+
+Teddy thought him a very naughty, ugly-tempered little dream, but still
+he went with him, wondering all the time how he could induce him to let
+the pretty dream go to Harriett, and as they walked up the road
+together the pretty dream still followed them, carrying her bunch of
+bubbles.
+
+They went on and on, until they came to a place where the ground was
+rough, and broken up with a number of black holes. The ugly dream went
+from one to another of these, pausing, and laying his ear to their
+edges.
+
+“What are you doing?” asked Teddy.
+
+“Hush! can’t you see I’m listening?” said the dream crossly.
+
+At last, after pausing at one of them, he turned to Teddy and nodded
+his head. “This is it,” he said; “this is where Harriett lives.”
+
+“Why, it isn’t at all!” cried Teddy, indignantly. “My cousin Harriett
+doesn’t live in a hole! She lives in a great big house with doors and
+windows.”
+
+“Well, anyway, this is her chimney,” said the dream, “and it’s the only
+way to get into her house from here. If you want to come, come; and if
+you don’t want to, why, stay,” and the dream sat down on the edge of
+the hole.
+
+Teddy hesitated. “If I went down that way, I think I’d fall and hurt
+myself,” he said at last.
+
+“Pooh! No, you wouldn’t if you took my hand,” said the dream. “I always
+go this way, and it’s as easy as anything.”
+
+So Teddy sat down on the edge of the hole, and grasped the dream’s
+shadowy fingers in his. Then they pushed themselves off the edge, and
+down they went through the darkness.
+
+Teddy felt so frightened for a minute that he quite lost his breath,
+but he held on tight to the dream’s fingers, and soon they landed, as
+softly and lightly as a feather, right in the nursery of Aunt Paulina’s
+house, and the pretty dream was still following them.
+
+“And now begins the fun,” whispered the dream.
+
+The house was very still, for everyone was fast asleep. The moon shone
+in through the window, making the room bright, and beyond the open
+closet door Teddy could see the toys all arranged in order just as
+Harriett had left them, (for she was a tidy little girl), and Harriett
+herself was tucked into her little white bed in the room beyond.
+
+Teddy felt so sorry to think of her having such an ugly dream that he
+stood still. “You won’t frighten her very much, will you?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I shall!” said the ugly dream. “I’ll frighten her just as much as
+ever I can; I’ll make her cry.”
+
+“No, you mustn’t,” said Teddy, almost crying himself. “I won’t let
+you.”
+
+“You can’t help it,” cried the dream, tauntingly.
+
+Suddenly a bright thought came into Teddy’s mind. “Anyway, you’re not
+so very ugly,” he said. “Harriet has a Jack-in-the-box that’s a great
+deal—oh! ever so much uglier than you.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” said the dream.
+
+“Yes, she has,” said Teddy; “and it’s right there in the closet.”
+
+“Then I’ll get it, and make myself look like it.” With that the dream
+crawled into the closet, and pushed back the hook of the box where Jack
+lived, and pop! up shot the most hideous little man that ever was seen,
+with a bright red face and white whiskers. “Hi! he _is_ ugly!” cried
+the dream with delight, and sitting down before the box he began to
+make his face like the Jack’s.
+
+Then softly and quickly Teddy closed the closet door, and turned the
+key in the lock, fastening the dream in. “Hi there! let me out! let me
+out!” cried the dream, beating softly on the door with its shadowy
+hands.
+
+“No, I won’t,” cried Teddy. “You can just stay in there, you ugly
+dream, for the pretty dream is going to Harriett now.” Then he turned
+to the pretty dream and took her by the hand, and her face shone as
+brightly as one of her own bubbles.
+
+Together they ran into Harriett’s room, and there she lay in her little
+white bed, with her eyes closed and her curls spread out over the
+pillow, and when they came in she smiled in her sleep.
+
+The dream shook the bubbles above the bed, and the dimples came into
+Harriett’s cheeks. “Oh! pretty, pretty!” she whispered with her eyes
+still closed. “Oh, Teddy? isn’t it pretty?”
+
+“Yes, it is pretty!” cried Teddy.
+
+
+“Did you call me, dear?” asked mamma, opening the door.
+
+Teddy was back in his own room, and all he could see of the Counterpane
+Fairy was the tip of her brown hood disappearing behind the counterpane
+hill, and that was gone in an instant.
+
+“Oh, Mamma! it was such a pretty dream,” cried Teddy.
+
+“Was it, darling?” said mamma. “Try to go to sleep again, dear, for it
+is very late, and you can tell me all about it to-morrow. Good-night,
+my little boy.”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER NINTH.
+DOWN THE RAT-HOLE.
+
+
+The next day Teddy was allowed to go about and follow mamma into the
+sewing-room, where he had the little cutting-table drawn out and his
+toys put on it, and played for a long time.
+
+In the afternoon Harriett stopped for a little while, and as soon as
+Teddy saw her his thoughts went back to the Counterpane Fairy and the
+story, and he cried out: “Oh, Harriett! I know what you dreamed last
+night.”
+
+“What did I dream?” asked Harriett.
+
+“Why, you dreamed about the soap-bubbles and me; didn’t you?”
+
+“How did you know I dreamed that?” asked Harriett.
+
+Then Teddy told her all about standing by the lake and seeing the
+dreams go past, and how he had shut the ugly one up in the toy-closet.
+
+Harriett listened with great interest. “Wasn’t that a funny dream?” she
+cried when he had ended.
+
+“A dream!” said Teddy. “Why, that wasn’t a dream, Harriett. That’s the
+story the Counterpane Fairy showed me. And don’t you know you _did_
+dream about the bubbles?”
+
+Harriet was silent awhile as if pondering it, and then she said, “My
+canary-bird flew away this morning.”
+
+“Who let it out?” asked Teddy, with interest. “Did you?”
+
+Harriett hesitated. “Well, I didn’t exactly let it out,” she said. “I
+guess I forgot to close the door after I cleaned its cage.” Then she
+added hastily: “But mamma hung the cage outside the window, and she
+says she thinks maybe it’ll come back unless someone has caught it.”
+
+Teddy wanted to hear a great deal more about the canary, but Harriett
+said she must go now, so he was left alone again to play with his toys.
+
+After dinner his mother went down-town to buy a present for Harriett,
+for the next day was to be the little girl’s birthday. Teddy wanted to
+get her a bag of marbles, but she thought perhaps she would be able to
+find something Harriett would like better than that. She would look
+about and see.
+
+Before she went she made Teddy lie down on the bed, and covered him
+over with the silk quilt, so that he might rest for a while. Then she
+kissed him and told him to try to take a nap, and promised to be back
+soon.
+
+After she had gone Teddy dozed comfortably for a while. Then he grew
+wide awake again, and turning over on his back he raised his knees into
+a hill, and lay looking out of the window, and wondering when mamma
+would come home, and what she would bring with her.
+
+“You’re not asleep, are you?” asked a little voice from his knees.
+
+“Oh, Counterpane Fairy, I’m so glad you’ve come,” cried Teddy, “for
+mamma has gone down-town, and I was just beginning to get lonely.”
+
+There was the familiar little figure in the brown cloak and hood,
+seated on top of the counterpane hill, and as he spoke she looked down
+on him smilingly. “I suppose the next thing will be a story,” she said.
+
+“Oh! will you show me one?” cried Teddy. “I wish you would, for I don’t
+know when mamma will be home.”
+
+“Very well,” said the fairy. “Perhaps I can show you one before she
+comes back. Which square shall it be this time?”
+
+“I’ve had the red, and the yellow, and the green, and ever so many: I
+wonder if that brown one has a good story to it.”
+
+“You might choose it and see,” said the fairy. So Teddy chose that one,
+and then the fairy began to count. “One, two, three, four, five,” she
+counted, and so on and on until she reached “FORTY-NINE!”
+
+
+“Why, how funny!” cried Teddy.
+
+He was nowhere at all but on the back door-step, and he sat there just
+as naturally as though he were not in a story at all. Then the back
+gate opened, and in through it came a little withered old woman,
+wearing a brown cloak, and a brown hood drawn over her head. “Why,
+Counterpane Fairy!” cried Teddy, but when she raised her head and
+looked at him he saw that it was not the Counterpane Fairy after all,
+but an old Italian woman carrying a basket on her arm.
+
+“You buy something, leetle boy?” she said.
+
+“I can’t,” said Teddy. “I haven’t any money except what’s in my bank,
+but I’ll ask Hannah and maybe she will.”
+
+So saying he ran into the kitchen. The clock was ticking on the wall,
+and the room smelled of fresh-baked bread, but it was empty. Opening
+the door of the stairway, Teddy called, “Hannah! Hannah!” There was no
+answer; it all seemed strangely still upstairs. “She must have gone
+out,” Teddy said to himself.
+
+When he went back to the outside door the old Italian had put down her
+basket and was sitting on the step beside it. She did not seem at all
+surprised when he told her he could not find anyone. “You not find
+anyone, and you not have money,” she said. “Then I tell you what I do;
+you put your hand in dis baskit, and I give you what you take; I make
+what you call ‘present.’”
+
+“Will you really?” cried Teddy.
+
+“Yis,” said the little old woman, smiling, and her smile was just like
+the smile of the Counterpane Fairy.
+
+“And you’ll give me whatever I take?”
+
+“Yis,” said the little old woman again.
+
+Teddy put his hand in under the cover and caught hold of something hard
+and cold. He pulled and pulled at it, and out it came; it was a little
+iron shovel.
+
+“You take something more,” said the little old woman. Teddy hesitated,
+but when he looked at her again he saw that she really meant it, so he
+put his hand in and this time he pulled out a large iron key.
+
+“Now try once more,” said the little old woman, and this third time it
+was a rat-trap baited with cheese, that Teddy drew from the basket.
+
+“But what shall I do with them?” he asked.
+
+“You keep dem,” said the old Italian, “and you find you need dem by and
+by.” Then she rose, and pulling her cloak over the basket she took her
+staff in her other hand and hobbled down the pathway.
+
+Teddy slipped the key into his pocket, and holding the shovel and the
+trap he ran down to the gate to open it for her. He stood looking after
+her as she went on down the street, her staff striking the bricks
+sharply, tap! tap! tap! Her back was certainly exactly like the
+Counterpane Fairy’s.
+
+As he walked slowly up the path swinging his shovel by the handle, he
+noticed that there was a rat-hole just back of the rain-butt, and he
+thought what fun it would be to dig it out, so he put the cage down on
+the ground and set to work with his shovel.
+
+The earth broke away from the rat-hole in great clods, and he found it
+so easy to dig that very soon he had made quite a big hole.
+
+Then he saw that down in this hole there was a flight of stone steps
+leading into the earth. “Why, isn’t that funny!” said Teddy. “Right in
+the back yard, too. I wonder where they go!”
+
+Tucking the shovel under his arm and taking the trap in his hand, Teddy
+stepped into the rat-hole and began to go down the stairs.
+
+He went on down and down and down, and at last he came to an iron door,
+and it was locked. Teddy tried it and knocked, but there was no answer.
+He listened with his ear against it, but he heard nothing, and he was
+just about to turn and go up the stairs again, when he remembered the
+key the little old woman had given him.
+
+He pulled it out of his pocket, and when he tried it in the keyhole it
+fitted exactly. He turned it, the door flew open, and Teddy stepped
+through.
+
+Beyond was a cave, just such as he had often wished he could live in,
+with a rough table and chair, old kegs, and a heap of rubbish in one
+corner. On each side of the cave was a heavy door studded with iron
+nails. “I will just see where these doors lead to,” said Teddy to
+himself, laying his trap and his shovel behind one of the kegs.
+
+As he reached the first door and put his hand on it he heard someone
+singing the other side of it as sweetly and clearly as a bird, and this
+is what the voice sang:
+
+“In field and meadow the grasses grow;
+The clouds are white and the winds they blow.
+Out in the world there is much to see,
+If I were but free! If I were but free!
+My wings were bright and my wings were strong;
+I plumed myself and I sang a song:
+Where is the hero to rescue me,
+And set me free? And set me free?”
+
+
+The song ended and Teddy opened the door.
+
+Within was another room that looked almost like the first, only there
+was a fireplace in it, and in front of this fireplace a young girl was
+sitting.
+
+As soon as Teddy opened the door she looked over her shoulder, and when
+she saw him she sprang to her feet with a glad cry and clasped her
+hands. “Oh!” she cried, “have you come to rescue me?”
+
+“Who are you?” asked Teddy, wondering at her.
+
+She was very beautiful. Her eyes were as bright and black as a sloe,
+her hair shone like threads of pure gold, and she wore a long cloak of
+golden feathers over her shoulders.
+
+When Teddy spoke she answered him, “I am Avis, the Bird-maiden.”
+
+“And how did you come here?” asked Teddy.
+
+Then the Bird-maiden told him how she used to live in a golden castle
+that was all her own; how she ate from crystal dishes and bathed every
+morning in a little marble bath-tub, and had nothing to do all day but
+swing in her golden swing and sing for her own pleasure. But after a
+while she grew tired of all this and began to wonder what the outside
+world was like, and one the day the sun was so bright and the air so
+sweet that she left her home and flew out into the wide, wide world.
+
+That was all very pleasant until she grew tired and sat down on a stone
+to rest. Then a great brown robber came and caught her and carried her
+down into his den, and there he kept her a prisoner in spite of her
+tears and prayers, and there she must wait on him and keep his house in
+order; every day he went out and left her along, coming back loaded
+down with food or golden treasure that he had stolen.
+
+“But why don’t you run away?” asked Teddy. “I would.”
+
+“Alas! I can’t,” said the Bird-maiden, “for whenever the
+robber-magician goes out he locks the door after him, and I have no key
+to open it.”
+
+Then Teddy told her that he had a key that would unlock the door and
+that he would save her.
+
+The Bird-maiden was very glad, but she said they must make haste, for
+it was almost time for the robber to come home; so she wrapped her
+cloak around her, and Teddy took her by the hand and together they ran
+to the door.
+
+They had hardly reached the outer cave, however, when Teddy heard a
+loud bang that echoed and re-echoed from the walls.
+
+“Alas! Alas!” cried the Bird-maiden, shrinking back and beginning to
+wring her hands, “we are too late. There comes the robber, and now we
+will never escape.”
+
+She had scarcely said this when in marched the robber-magician sure
+enough. He wore a great soft hat pulled down over his face, and he had
+a long brown nose and little black beads of eyes. His mustache stuck
+out on each side like swords, and he carried a great sack over his
+shoulder.
+
+The robber-magician threw the sack down on the floor and frowned at
+Teddy from under his hat. “How now!” he cried. “Who’s this who has come
+down into my cavern without even so much as a ‘by your leave’?”
+
+Teddy felt rather frightened, but he spoke up bravely. “I’m Teddy,” he
+said, “and I didn’t know this was your cave. I thought it was just a
+rat-hole.”
+
+“A rat-hole!” cried the robber-magician, bursting into a roar of
+laughter. “A rat-hole! My cave a rat-hole! Ho! ho! ho!”
+
+“Yes, I did,” said Teddy, “and I didn’t know it was yours, but if you
+want me to go I will.”
+
+“Not so fast,” said the robber. “Sometimes it is easier to come into my
+cave than to go out, and you must sit down and have some supper with me
+now that you are here.”
+
+Teddy was quite willing to do that, for he was really hungry, so he and
+the robber drew chairs up to the table, and the Bird-maiden, at a
+gesture from the robber, picked up the sack that he had thrown upon the
+ground, and out from it she drew some pieces of bread and some bits of
+cold meat. It did not look particularly good, but it seemed to be all
+there was, so when the robber began to eat Teddy helped himself too.
+
+The robber-magician did not take off his hat, and he ate very fast;
+after a while he leaned back in his chair and began to tell Teddy what
+a great magician he was, and about his treasure chamber.
+
+“There,” he said, “is where I keep my gold. I have gold, and gold, and
+gold, great bars and lumps and crusts of gold, all piled up in my
+treasure chamber.” At last he rose, pushed back his chair, and bade
+Teddy follow him and he should see how great and rich he was.
+
+Leading the way across the cave, he unlocked the third door, and
+flinging it open stepped back so that Teddy might look in. As he opened
+it a very curious smell came out.
+
+Teddy stared and stared about the treasure chamber. “But where is the
+gold?” he said.
+
+“There, right before your eyes,” said the robber. “Don’t you see it?”
+
+“Why, that isn’t gold. That’s nothing but cheese,” cried Teddy.
+
+“Cheese! cheese!” cried the robber-magician, stamping his foot in a
+rage; “I tell you it’s gold.”
+
+“It isn’t! it’s cheese!” said Teddy. “Look! I have some just like it;
+I’ll show you,” and running to the keg where he had left his trap he
+pulled it out and held it up for the robber to see.
+
+As soon as the robber-magician saw the cheese in the trap his fingers
+began to work and his mouth to water. “Oh, what a fine rich piece of
+gold!” he cried. “How do you get it out?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Teddy. “I don’t think it comes out.”
+
+“There must be some way,” cried the robber. “Let me see,” and taking
+the trap from Teddy he put it down on the floor and began to pick and
+pry at the bars, but he could not get the cheese out, and the more he
+tried the more eager he grew. “There’s one way,” he muttered to
+himself, looking up at Teddy suspiciously from under his slouch hat.
+
+“How is that?” asked Teddy.
+
+“If one were only a rat one could get at it fast enough,” said the
+robber-magician.
+
+“Yes, but you’re not,” said Teddy.
+
+“All the same it might be managed,” said the magician. Again he tore
+and tore at the bars, and he grew so eager that he seemed to forget
+about everything but the cheese. “I’ll do it,” he cried, “yes, I will.”
+Then he laid of his great soft hat, and crossing his forefingers he
+cried:
+
+“Innocent me! Innocent me!
+As I was once again I will be.”
+
+
+And now the magician’s nose grew longer, his mustache grew thin and
+stiff like whiskers, his sword changed to a long tail, and in a minute
+he was nothing at all but a great brown rat that ran into the trap.
+
+“Click!” went the trap, and there he was fastened in with the cheese.
+
+It was in vain that he shook the bars and squeaked.
+
+“Quick! quick!” cried the Bird-maiden, “let us escape before he can use
+his spells.” She caught Teddy by the hand, and together they ran to the
+door that led to the stairway. “Your key! Oh, make haste!” cried the
+Bird-maiden, breathlessly.
+
+In a moment Teddy had unlocked the door they had passed through, and it
+had swung to behind them. Up the stairs they ran, and there they were
+standing in the sunlight near the rain-butt.
+
+“I am free! I am free!” cried the Bird-maiden, joyously. “Oh! thank
+you, little boy. And now for home.” She caught the edges of her cloak
+and spread it wide, and as she did so it changed to wings, her head
+grew round and covered with feathers, and with a glad cry she sprang
+from the earth and flew up and away and out of sight through the
+sunlight.
+
+“Why, it’s Harriett’s canary!” cried Teddy.
+
+
+“And now I must go,” said the Counterpane Fairy.
+
+Teddy was back in the India-room. The sun was low, and a broad band of
+pale sunlight lay across the foot of the bed. The fairy was just
+starting down the counterpane hill.
+
+“Was it really Harriett’s canary?” asked Teddy.
+
+“I haven’t time to talk of that now,” cried the Counterpane Fairy, “for
+I hear your mother coming. Good-bye! good-bye!”
+
+And sure enough she had scarcely disappeared behind the counterpane
+hill when his mamma came in.
+
+“Oh, Mamma!” cried Teddy, “do you think Harriett’s canary came back?
+
+“I don’t know, dear,” said his mother. Then she put a little package
+into his hand. “Do you think Harriett will like that?” she asked.
+
+When Teddy opened the bundle he saw a cunning little bisque doll that
+sat in a little tin bath-tub. You could take the doll out and dress it,
+or you could really bathe it in the tub.
+
+“Oh! isn’t that cute!” cried Teddy, with delight. “Won’t little Cousin
+Harriett be pleased!”
+
+“I hope she will,” said mamma.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER TENTH.
+THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY SAYS GOOD-BYE
+
+
+Teddy was to go out-doors the next day if it was mild and pleasant. The
+doctor had come in that morning for the last time to see him. “Well, my
+little man,” he had said, giving Teddy’s cheek a pinch, “can’t be
+pretending you’re a sick boy any longer with cheeks and eyes like
+these. Now we’ll have you back at school in no time, and then I suppose
+you’ll be up to all your old tricks again.”
+
+Later on the little boy had gone downstairs for dinner, for the first
+time since he had been ill. Everything there had looked very strange to
+him, and as if he had not seen it for years.
+
+He had felt just as well as ever until he tried to chase the cat,
+Muggins, down the hall, and then his legs had given way in a funny,
+weak fashion that made him laugh.
+
+After dinner Muggins followed him upstairs, and curling down under a
+chair went fast asleep. Teddy took his blocks and built them about the
+chair, so that when the cat woke he found himself built up inside a
+little house.
+
+However, a door had been left, and he poked his nose and his paw
+through it, and then the whole front wall went down with a noisy
+clatter, and Muggins scampered down to the kitchen with his tail on
+end. Teddy had to laugh; he looked so funny.
+
+Papa came home from his office earlier than usual that afternoon,
+bringing with him a bundle of long, smooth sticks and a roll of tissue
+papers, and spent all the rest of the time between that and supper in
+making a great kite for Teddy. He told the little boy that if the next
+day were fine he would fly it for him, and that he might ask some of
+the boys to come and help.
+
+Teddy had never seen such a large kite before. When papa stood it up it
+was a great deal taller than the little boy himself. The gold star that
+was pasted on where the sticks crossed was just on a level with his
+eyes.
+
+So much seemed to have happened that day that very soon after supper
+Teddy felt tired and was quite willing to let mamma undress him and put
+him to bed.
+
+It felt very good to lie down between the cool sheets again, and very
+soon Teddy’s eyelids began to blink heavily, and he was already
+drifting off into that blissful feeling that comes just as one is going
+to sleep, when he became dimly conscious of a faint sound of music.
+
+At first, half asleep as he was, he thought that it must be little
+Cousin Harriett winding up the music-box in the room, and then he
+suddenly started into consciousness with the remembrance that he was
+alone and that it couldn’t be Cousin Harriett. She was at home; in bed
+perhaps, already.
+
+The music seemed to sound quite near him, and it was very sweet and
+soft. Now that he was awake it sounded more like the voice of the
+singing garden than anything else.
+
+Suddenly a faint rosy light appeared at the foot of the bed, and
+standing in it was the most beautiful lady that Teddy had ever seen.
+She was quite tall,—as tall as his own mother, and not even the fairy
+Rosine, or the Bird-maiden,—no, nor the Princess Aureline herself, had
+been half as beautiful.
+
+But though the lady was so lovely there was something very familiar
+about her face. “Why, Counterpane Fairy!” cried Teddy.
+
+The Counterpane Fairy, for it was indeed she, did not speak, but
+smiling at Teddy she moved softly and smoothly, as though swept along
+by the music to the side of the bed, and, still smiling, she bent above
+the little boy.
+
+As he looked up into the face that leaned above him, it seemed to
+change in some strange way, and now it was the old Italian woman who
+had given him the presents from her basket; a moment after it was the
+face of the little child who had talked with him upon the rainbow; no,
+it was not; it was really the Counterpane Fairy herself, and no one
+else.
+
+Closer and closer she leaned above him, seeming to enfold him with
+faint music and light and perfume. “Good-bye,” she whispered softly.
+“Good-bye! little boy.”
+
+“Oh, Counterpane Fairy! where are you going? Don’t go away!” cried
+Teddy.
+
+“I’m not going away,” said the fairy. “I shall be beside you still just
+as often as ever, only you won’t see me.”
+
+“But won’t there be any more stories?” cried Teddy, in dismay.
+
+“Sometime, perhaps,” said the Counterpane Fairy, “but not now, for
+to-morrow you’ll be out and playing with the other boys, and after that
+it will be your school and your games that you’ll be thinking of.”
+
+“Oh, Counterpane Fairy, don’t go!” cried Teddy again, reaching out his
+arms toward her; but they touched nothing but empty air. Waving her
+hand to him and still smiling, the Counterpane Fairy slowly, slowly
+faded away. With her too, faded the rosy light and the perfume that had
+filled the room; only the faint sound of music was left. Then it too
+died away.
+
+Teddy sat up and looked about him. The room was very still and dim. He
+heard nothing but the ticking of the clock. The half-moon had sailed up
+above the dark tops of the pine-trees on the lawn outside, and by its
+light he saw the great kite that papa had made him, as it stood propped
+up on the mantle. The gilt star in the middle of it shone.
+
+It was true that he was no longer a little sick child. To-morrow he
+would be out-of-doors again, and shouting and playing with all the
+other boys.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY ***
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