THERE is a bad fairy in this house. I don't care what you say. There must be. Here have I been hours hunting everywhere for my silver whistle. I know I had it yesterday evening, and I haven't been out since, and we can't play at our hunt in the wood without it. And they're all waiting for us. It's too bad—it is," and Leonard stamped about the room, flinging everything topsy-turvy in his vain search.
"And my umbrella, and my sleeve stud," said David, his two years older brother. "They have completely disappeared. Upon my word, Leonard, I think you're right, this house is bewitched."
"Master Leonard, please, here's your whistle. Cook found it just now lying beside the pump in the garden."
"There now—didn't I say so? It must be a bad fairy. Was I near the pump in the garden last night? How did the whistle get there, if it wasn't bewitched?" said Leonard, as he and David hurried off.
It was true he had not been near the pump, but he had left the whistle among some flowers on the nursery table, and "baby," as his six-years old sister was called, had thrown it into the basket with the remains of her nosegays. What more easy than for the heavy whistle to drop out of the lightly made open wicker work, as the nursemaid was carrying the withered flowers and leaves to throw away? David's umbrella, had he known it, was at that moment reposing in the pew-opener's care among various "lost and strayed" articles at church; and the sleeve stud was safely ensconced in a mouse-hole behind the chest of drawers on which it had been carelessly laid, to be flung off again in a frantic hunt for some fish hooks, whose disappearance no doubt Leonard explained in the same way.
It came to be rather a convenient idea. Not only losses, but breakages, tearings, all such annoyances were laid to the account of the bad fairy. And it was a very heavy account. Never had there been so many unlucky accidents as during these last few weeks spent by the boys and their sister with their mother, in a little country house, lessons being for the time put aside, nothing thought of but fun and frolic. Even old nurse, who usually took charge—too much charge—of the light-hearted careless boys, was away; there was no one to "worry" about putting things by tidily, wearing the proper clothes at the proper time, and so on. At least so it seemed for a while. But things grew worse and worse, the bad fairy more and more spiteful, till at last even their indulgent mother could take it all quietly no longer.
One evening, finding several of her own private possessions missing—scissors and pen-knife in particular—she came late into the boys room after they were asleep, there to look for them. But she almost forgot her errand in her horrified amazement at the disorder and confusion before her. What a difference from the neat room she used to peep into at night when nurse was at home—everything everywhere, nothing where it should be, almost a sort of ingenuity in the perfection of disorder.
