"True," he answered, "it's not yet dark enough for the magic to work."
"No wonder everything is sooty and grimy with those chimneys all around us throwing out tons and tons of soft coal smoke to settle over everything. Don't they ever stop?"
"They're at it twenty-four hours a day," returned her grandfather. "But night will take all the ugliness into its arms and hide it; the sordidness and griminess will disappear and fairyland will come forth for a playground. The ugly smoke will turn into a thing of beauty. The queer point of it all is," he continued, shaking his head sadly, "fairyland is there all the time and always beautiful, only you can't see it."
Dicky's eyes opened wide and he gazed out of the window intent on peering into this mysterious invisible playground.
"Lots of things are like that," agreed Roger. "Don't you remember how those snowflakes we looked at under the magnifying glass on Ethel Blue's birthday burst into magnificent crystals? You wouldn't think a handful of earth—just plain dirt—was pretty, would you? But it is. Look at it through a microscope and see what happens."
"But, Grandfather, if the beauty is there right now why can't we see it?" insisted Ethel Brown.
Mr. Emerson stared out of the window for a moment.
"That was a pretty necklace of beads you strung for Ayleesabet."
"We all thought they were beauty beads."
"And that was a lovely string of pearls that Mrs. Schermerhorn wore at the reception for which you girls decorated her house."