"'O wonderful enchantress!' said the dreaming painter, 'do not vanish before I have had time to thank you for your magic gift. I have nothing to offer you but my gratitude in return; for the diamonds of this world are too heavy for such an ethereal being, and the gold of this world is useless to you who have no wants that it can supply. The fame I have acquired I cannot impart to you, for few of my race believe in the existence of yours. What, then, can I do? I can only thank you for your goodness. But tell me at least your name, if you have a name, that I may cut it on a ring, and wear it always on my finger.'
"'My name,' replied the fairy, 'is Perseverance.'"
"Well!" said the children, looking at each other, "she has cheated us after all!"
A LOST WAND
More than a hundred years ago, at the foot of a wild mountain in Norway, stood an old castle, which even at the time I write of was so much out of repair as in some parts to be scarcely habitable.
In a hall of this castle a party of children met once on Twelfth-night to play at Christmas games and dance with little Hulda, the only child of the lord and lady.
The winters in Norway are very cold, and the snow and ice lie for months on the ground; but the night on which these merry children met it froze with more than ordinary severity, and a keen wind shook the trees without, and roared in the wide chimneys like thunder.
Little Hulda's mother, as the evening wore on, kept calling on the servants to heap on fresh logs of wood, and these, when the long flames crept around them, sent up showers of sparks that lit up the brown walls, ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway—pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers and crowns, and cranberry pies, and whipped cream as white as the snow outside; but nothing was admired so much as the great cake, and when the children saw it they set up a shout which woke the two hounds who were sleeping on the hearths, and they began to bark, which roused all the four dogs in the kennels outside who had not been invited to see either the cake or the games, and they barked, too, shaking and shivering with cold, and then a great lump of snow slid down from the roof, and fell with a dull sound like distant thunder on the pavement of the yard.
"Hurrah!" cried the children, "the dogs and the snow are helping us to shout in honor of the cake."