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
THE CAT AND THE PARROT
Once there was a cat and once there was a parrot. They agreed to invite each other to dinner, turn and turn about. The cat should ask the parrot to-day, and the parrot should ask the cat to-morrow.