“Oh, Counterpane Fairy, I’m so glad you’ve come,” cried Teddy, “for mamma has gone down-town, and I was just beginning to get lonely.”
There was the familiar little figure in the brown cloak and hood, seated on top of the counterpane hill, and as he spoke she looked down on him smilingly. “I suppose the next thing will be a story,” she said.
“Oh! will you show me one?” cried Teddy. “I wish you would, for I don’t know when mamma will be home.”
“Very well,” said the fairy. “Perhaps I can show you one before she comes back. Which square shall it be this time?”
“I’ve had the red, and the yellow, and the green, and ever so many: I wonder if that brown one has a good story to it.”
“You might choose it and see,” said the fairy. So Teddy chose that one, and then the fairy began to count. “One, two, three, four, five,” she counted, and so on and on until she reached “FORTY-NINE!”
“Why, how funny!” cried Teddy.
He was nowhere at all but on the back door-step, and he sat there just as naturally as though he were not in a story at all. Then the back gate opened, and in through it came a little withered old woman, wearing a brown cloak, and a brown hood drawn over her head. “Why, Counterpane Fairy!” cried Teddy, but when she raised her head and looked at him he saw that it was not the Counterpane Fairy after all, but an old Italian woman carrying a basket on her arm.
“You buy something, leetle boy?” she said.