PAGE
["Ask the Robin"]1
[A Magic Table]60
[The Weather Maiden]121
[The Enchanted Trunks]176

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAGE
[Pretty Ysenda (P. 66) ] Frontispiece
["It makes me think of all sorts of lovely summer things"]8
[With a wonderful note of exceeding joy, he spread his wings and flew round the bower, returning again to perch on the child's still outstretched hand, as if in gratitude]52
["Your motive was pure kindness—free from all selfishness, therefore you succeeded"]119
["So you have come at last, little maiden"]136
[She caught sight of a tiny figure peering at her from behind the rubbish]150
[Stopped and kissed it gently and respectfully]214
[Lo and behold—Cousin Felicity had vanished]239

"Ask the Robin"

Once upon a time—a fairly long ago time—there lived in a neat little cottage two young girls who were sisters. If you had gone to see them on a bright warm summer's day, I daresay you would have envied them and their life and their lot. For they were pretty and healthy and they loved each other dearly, and the cottage was charming to look at, in its dress of clustering roses and honeysuckle and traveller's joy, and other sweet and beautiful climbing, flowering plants. Furthermore, it stood in a little garden filled with treasures of different kinds, pansies, of which there was a great variety, and lilies and mignonette and all the flowers one loves to see in an old-fashioned garden of the kind. And the sisters kept it in perfect order, the beds were always raked, there was never a weed to be seen, the tiny plots of grass were like velvet.

In spring too it was very pretty, when first the snowdrops and then the crocuses and primroses and violets woke up after their long winter sleep, and in autumn also there was a show of beauties, dahlias and chrysanthemums and kitchen pokers and other pretty things of the season.

And indeed, even in winter, the place had its charm, of evergreen shrubs and bright berries and—till the snow came and made an end of all but the hardiest plants, the still remaining lovely variegated leaves of late autumn.

No care or skill was wanting to keep the whole as pretty as could possibly be, for the sisters' father was a gardener, and from him they had learnt both love of growing things and knowledge of all needed for their welfare. And not so very long before this story begins I doubt if Aria or Linde—these were the girls' names—cared what time of year it was, for all were happy days to them. Glowing summer, sparkling spring, rich mellow autumn, even winter, often cold and grey—all brought joy and gladness, till one sad night terrible sorrow fell upon them. Their father was drowned on his way home from market, in crossing a swollen stream, whose rushing waters broke down the little wooden bridge, over which in the darkness he was driving his small pony-cart. And as the poor girls' mother had died years before, they were now truly orphans.