'No,' she replied. 'This is only one of my posts. I am here to-day because I expected you. And I spin when I have no other special work to do. We do not love idleness.'
Hildegarde had moved quite close up to her.
'What are you spinning now?' she said softly. Oh, I see—it is cobwebs, is it not?'
'You have good eyes, my child,' said the dame; and so indeed she had, for, but for a certain glistening as the light caught the almost invisible ball of threads, nothing could have been perceived. 'Yes, our fairy looms use a good deal of cobweb yarn—there is nothing like it for our gossamer tissue, nothing that takes such shades of colour.'
Leonore listened with wide-open eyes.
'Oh,' she said beneath her breath, 'I wish I could see it—I——'
'So you shall,' said the dame; 'that is a wish it is easy to grant'; and as she spoke she rose from her seat, giving a touch to the spinning-wheel which made it revolve with double speed, and changed the soft whirr into a louder sound, almost like a note of music. The children stared at the wheel, and in that moment of their attention being distracted the old dame had vanished, and in her stead stood a lovely figure, smiling down upon them.
'Oh,' exclaimed Hildegarde, 'you are my own fairy lady. I remember you now—it was you that gave me the nuts when I was a baby.'
'And I have dreamt of you,' added Leonore eagerly. 'And this is the gossamer—may I touch it?' she went on, softly stroking the gleaming garment which floated round the fairy. 'I can scarcely feel it.'