THE PIXIES’ THANKS
Once upon a time, and a long time ago, and a long, long time before that, a little old woman had a garden. And in this garden she planted a beautiful bed of tulips. The slim green stalks of them stood in the earth, tall and straight. And every other row of lovely cups they held was red and every other was yellow. At twilight the little old woman patted down the last of them, and went in to boil the kettle for her tea.
Now, as soon as she was gone there came peeping and tripping from the field near by a crowd of pixies. They ran between the rows, and skipped from one flower to the next, and put their slender fingers down into the cups, and clapped their fairy palms together and cried, “How lovely!” But the little old woman drinking her tea before the fire didn’t hear a word.
Well, night came, and the pixies’ teeny weeny bits of elfin babies grew sleepy. They must have bawled, though of course big ears like yours and mine couldn’t have heard them, for all of a sudden all the little pixies scampered home, crying,
“Coming,
My teeny one,
Coming,
My weeny one,
Watch glowworm
Bright,
My speck of delight!”
And then the cleverest little pixie mother among them thought of something. “Let’s lay them in those lovely cradles,” said she; “they’ll be as safe as a bug in a rose while we are greeting the queen.” She at once picked up her baby and ran back with it to the garden. And so did the others with theirs. They laid the tiny babies in the tulip cups and sang them to rest. The tulips rocked to and fro in the wind and made music for the lullaby. The little old woman washing her teacup caught a note of the music and singing, and stopped her clatter to listen, it was so sweet.
As soon as the elfin babies were fast asleep, the pixies tripped lightly off on the very tiptop tips of their toes. The silver Moon was rising, and they were just in time to form a ring on the green and dance in her honor. They circled nine times and then looked up at her, and she beamed down on them and they bowed low. Then she passed on through the heavens to make way for the day.
It was now the dawn of morning. The pixies ran back to the tulip cradles in the little old woman’s garden, crying,
“Weeny
Sleepy head,
Leave
Dewy bed,
Time
To get up
From
Soft tulip
Cup.”
The little old woman awoke in the nick of time to hear them kissing and caressing the elfin babies as they carried them home. In a bound she was out of bed and at the window, but they had vanished.
For all that she knew they had been there. She could tell it by the tulips. The slim green stalks of them stood in the earth, as they had when she planted them, tall and straight. And every other row of lovely cups they held was red and every other was yellow. Yet there was a wonderful change. It wasn’t only the shining drops of dew on them. No, it was something more wonderful—it was fairy fragrance. Every tulip smelled as sweet as a rose. This was the pixies’ thanks to the little old woman.
News of these rare tulips went far and wide, and people came from here, there, and everywhere to buy them. So for the rest of her days the little old woman had plenty of money for many a cup of tea, and a pinch of snuff into the bargain.
—Angela M. Keyes