THE FAIRY MUSIC

CHAPTER XXII

What the Fairies Thought

PUCK was sitting on top of his favourite toadstool, balancing a blade of grass on his nose. The fairies were watching him do one trick after another with delight. He wasn't the least bit cross now.

"Ker-ek!" croaked the old frog. "You make me dizzy."

"Are you there still?" said Puck, turning a somersault on to the ground. "I thought your cold was no better."

"I haven't got a cold," grumbled the frog. "I haven't always got a cold. Sometimes it's a cold, sometimes it's not."

"Well," said Puck, "you see, he came to our party after all."

But the old frog didn't answer. He made all kinds of queer noises, blew himself out like a balloon, and really frightened the fairies. They ran as fast as they could with dewdrops and honey-balls—their medicine, you know—to help him.

"I'm all right!" he gasped. "I'm all right. I was only laughing."

This was too much for the fairies. They laughed and laughed until they were tired, for who had ever heard of an old frog laughing?

"What were you laughing at?" Puck asked.

"Why, at you, of course!" replied the old frog. "Your party was delightful. It quite cured my cold. And that boy of yours, George Henry, is a nice little boy. I'll teach him to swim one day."

This was quite a long speech for the old frog, and he was quite hoarse for two days after it.

Puck stood up on a tall thistle and bowed solemnly. "Listen!" he said. "George Henry is a wonder-child. I said he was, and so he is. If he hadn't had a large piece of fairyness in him he would never, never have come to the party at all. His great-great-great-grandmother, you know, was quite half a fairy. And his mother makes up stories about us in her head. I knew I was right!"

"You are clever!" cried the fairies in chorus.

"Am I not a clever Puck?" he cried, turning head over heels. "Clever, clever, clever!" And he danced round and round the old frog with all the fairies after him.

Well, that's a good thing! All the fairies understand that George Henry is a kind of a fairy, and quite believe that in time he will grow more and more like one, although the storks "Pooh, pooh!" whenever they hear this, and ask: "What about us? He's our boy!"

George is growing up fast, and will soon be a man—and yet that's not really true, for he's not a man at all, but just George.

Alexander said one day—but you will have to wait until another time to hear that!