TO PLEASE EIGHT AND A HALF
First of all there was Mildred, who was eleven, and quite sedate. Then there were the twins, Eveline and Madeline, who were eight and a half and eight and a half and ten minutes old, respectively, and who liked stories.
“Can you tell ’em?” Madeline inquired anxiously. She was curled up in my lap, and when she spoke she wrinkled up her nose in a funny little way that hid the one freckle on its tip that was the only means of distinguishing her from Eveline.
“I’ll try,” I offered.
“Make it about goblins, please,” ordered Madeline.
“And fairies,” Eveline added.
“And real people, too,” suggested Mildred who was, as I said, eleven, and almost beyond fairies, which was rather a pity.
“Once upon a time,” I started, and paused. A grown-up had interrupted us with some foolish grown-up question.
“Once upon a time,” again I began.
“You said that before,” objected Eveline.
“Yes’m,” accused Madeline.
“—Many, many years ago, there was a big forest, bigger than any you have ever seen.”
“’Scuse me, Ma’am, I know where there is a biggest forest.”
“Well, this was even bigger,” I insisted. “So big, in fact, that the leaves were as large as—as the flowers on that chair.” I finished pointing to the exaggerated tapestry on the furniture.
“Now at the edge of the woods there was a little village, where a blacksmith lived, with his only daughter, Hope.
“One day he sent Hope out into the forest to pick berries. As she went into the woods, by the little path which led from her house, there hopped out on it a little bunny—like the ones in the park, you know, excepting that this one had two tails.”
(“Why?” asked Madeline.
“To clean out his house with, of course,” explained Mildred.)
“Now, although Hope had walked in the forest ever since she was a little girl, she had never, never seen a bunny with two tails. So she followed this one. Further and further she went, and darker and darker it grew, but Hope did not notice this, for she was too busy watching Mr. Two-tails.
“Suddenly he disappeared, and left her standing in front of a great, green-grey stone. It was very dark, and poor Hope was very much frightened. I would have been, too. Wouldn’t you?”
Three heads bobbed up and down energetically, and three pairs of eyes opened very wide.
“But she was a sensible little girl, and knew that the good fairies would help her. So she knocked on the stone. There started a whirring noise, as of wings.
“Say the magic word, and tell me your name,” sang a silvery voice.
“Hope,” said the little girl.
At this the stone opened, and she went into a beautiful little room, all lighted with fireflies and glow-worms. On the floor sat a fairy, busy mending a butterfly’s broken wing.
‘Do you live here all alone?’ asked Hope, as she drank honey and dew-drops which the busy ants had brought her.
“Yes,” sighed the fairy sadly. “I used to live with the forest goblins—”
“But they are bad,” interrupted Hope. “Father has told me stories about them.”
“Not bad!” reproved the fairy “but they did not like me to help the wood-land folks. They made me come here, and said they would keep every one from seeing me. Nobody can enter without the pass-word, Hope. And I cannot be free until a prince comes to sing to me.”
“The next morning the blacksmith awoke, and called Hope to him, but of course she did not come. He was very much frightened and called out all the village folk to help look for her. Then a strange thing happened. The blacksmith looked at the wall of his hut, and saw a message appear in letters of gold which said, ‘Whosoever shall find Hope shall be made by the fairies a Prince, and shall be given a beauteous castle.’
“The villagers started out, and with them a little apprentice lad searched too. Now, of course, the goblins kept every one away from the great green-grey stone, but in spite of all the goblin’s enchantments the apprentice lad came to the house of the fairy, because he had followed a little two-tailed bunny. And when he got there he was so happy he just sang, and sang, and as he sang his coarse village clothes fell off him and the royal robes of a Prince appeared in their place.
“And so he took Hope back to the village with him, and the fairy flew out, singing and happy to be free. At the village there was great rejoicing, and they feasted at the Prince’s palace for a month and a day.”
“Didn’t they get sick?” inquired Mildred.
“And a few years later they were married.”
“And lived happily ever after?” asked Eveline, anxiously.
“And lived happily ever after!” I assured them.
THE MUSIC CHARM
(A Tiny Tot Rhyme)
When the great man came to play
He didn’t chase me far away,
But let me stand beside him so
That I could watch his fingers go.
I never, never saw him make
The very tiniest mistake....
And, say, I saw that player look
At his ten fingers, and the book
At once! So I knew there must be
Some trick that he had hid from me!
And maybe, when he’d gone away
The spell that brought the tunes would stay!
So when I felt that nobody
Was bothering to notice me,
I looked about that piano
Inside and outside, high and low,
To find that music. Timidly
I pressed each finger on a key;
Ma said it didn’t sound the same ...
It sounded queer and sounded lame,
But I don’t care, because some day
I’ll make him charm it so’s to stay!
And then maybe I’ll sit and look
At my ten fingers and the book!