Speak it low and speak it clear."
Evelyn listened with amazement not unmixed with pleasure. Pleasure it certainly was to find herself at last in the presence of a real live fairy, and amazement she undoubtedly felt both at the sight before her, and at the speech to which she had just listened. She was perfectly aware that her reply ought to be given in verse, and the difficulty was that she was particularly stupid at making rhymes. She was one of those children who always tried to beg off if any of those amusing games was proposed in the evenings at home, in which either everybody has to make four rhymes or more on a certain given subject, generally answering a question and introducing some noun which has nothing to do with it, or else four rhymes are given out, and everybody has to write the previous part of the four lines in any metre they please.
Evelyn, I say, always either begged to be excused playing, or else nestled up close to her father (who was rather handy at that kind of thing), and asked him to write her lines quietly for her, which he unfortunately was in the habit of doing—unfortunately, because the consequence was that at the present momentous crisis, the poor child could not by any means think what to say. One reason, perhaps, was that she had nothing particular for which she wished to ask the fairies, but, whatever the reason, no rhyme would come to her mind.
All she could think of was an occasional line of some of Dr. Watts's hymns, which did not seem to have anything at all to do with fairies, and one or two old pieces of poetry which she had heard long ago in the school-room and which kept coming into her head now, and probably keeping out something which might have answered her purpose much better.
The fairy waited for a few seconds without impatience, but as no answer appeared to be forthcoming, she stamped her foot upon the ground, and appeared visibly annoyed. Conscious that she was hardly acting either a wise or dignified part in remaining silent, Evelyn now made a great effort to remember or to invent something that might be suitable to the occasion, and as the fairy stamped her foot a second time, somewhat impatiently, she hastily blurted out:—
"Let dogs delight to bark and bite—
I don't know how to answer right;"
and then stood blushing and trembling just as if she had certainly answered wrong. Upon this the fairy gave vent to a low, musical laugh, like the last notes of a very good musical box, and then once more accosted the child as follows:
"When fairies speak in kindly mood,
To answer nothing back were rude;