A Faery Surprise Party.
LILLIE'S STORY.
A Faery Surprise Party.
Y name is Jack Frost, and I have a story to tell. If you don't know who I am, ask my friend North East Wind, Esq., and he will tell you, and whistle a tune which he made up about me. I am Painter to her Beauty Mab, Queen of the Faeries. She gives me plenty of work to do; in the summer-time I go North, like other artists, to take sketches, but when the winter comes then I come back and paint my pictures. I paint chiefly on glass, though sometimes on pottery, the night is the time I like best to work in, for in the day-time the sun tries to put some colour into the paintings, which spoils them; white is the only colour I ever use.
I was going to tell you, however, a story about what I saw the other night. Queen Mab sent a snow-flake to me with a message. I was to paint eight large squares of glass in a certain window of a certain house. I might paint what I chose only it must be done in good season, for the Queen was to visit the painting when it was finished. So I was at the glass and at work early—'twas only a little after sundown; my friend, North East Wind, jolly old fellow! was whistling a tune right merrily as I handled my brush.
There was a light inside the room, and I could see everything that was going on there; I could hear everything too, for there was a crack in one of the panes of glass; these cracks spoil my paintings—I never can make any mark on the glass close to them—but how ever, here was this crack, and I could make out through it everything that was going on. A nurse was putting a little girl named Milly to bed, and they talked incessantly. Milly was to have a party the next day, which was her sixth birth-day; it was to be her first party. All things had been made ready for it; she had had a new dress, white with red spots like wafers all over it, and she was to wear a red sash and bronze kid slippers. Twelve little girls had been invited, but only eleven were sure to come; Susan Peabody was sick, and might not be there.
All this I heard, and I saw Milly tucked up in bed and left to go to sleep. Then I worked with a will, for I had no time to spare. I begged my jolly friend, N. E. Wind, to be off with himself, as he interrupted my work. So he gave one long wheugh! and away he went.