Soap-bubble stories

Transcribers notes: Alternative spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication. Changes have been made as follows: Page 125. on the top of a dias changed to on the top of a dais Page 131. tobogganned down a steep changed to tobogganed down a steep
It was twilight and the children tired of playing gathered round the fire.
Outside, the snow fell softly, softly; and the bare trees shook their branches in the keen air. The pleasant glow of the blazing logs lighted up the circle of happy faces, and peopled the distant corners with elfin shadows.
All the afternoon the children, pipe in hand, with soap suds before them, had been blowing airy bubbles that caught the gleams of a hundred flying rainbows—but now in the fading daylight, the pipes were put aside, and they threw themselves down on the fur rug, and looked with thoughtful eyes into the caverns of the fire.
What can we do now? they cried, Won't you make us some bubbles?
And someone sitting in the shadow, who had watched and admired their handiwork; whipped up some white froth in a fairy basin, and taking a pipe, she blew them some bubbles.
Not so beautiful as the children's own, with their pure reflections of the light and sunshine—but the best she could fashion with the materials she had at hand; for the only soap she could find was Imagination, and her pipe was a humble black pen.

It was a village of fountains. They poured from the sides of houses, bubbled up at street corners, sprang from stone troughs by the roadside, and one even gushed from the very walls of the old Church itself, and fell with a monotonous tinkle into a carved stone basin beneath.
The old Church stood on a high plateau overlooking the lake. It jutted out so far, on its great rock, that it seemed to overhang the precipice; and as the neighbours walked upon the terrace on Sundays, and enjoyed the shade of the row of plane trees, they could look down over the low walls of the Churchyard almost into the chimneys of the wooden houses clustering below.