The fairy shook her head.
'No,' she replied, 'the Four Winds are not fairies, they are spirits, and above us all; it is only the little winds, so to say—which are to the great ones like the little brooks compared to the great ocean—over whom we have authority. And,' she added more lightly, 'they are troublesome enough sometimes, I assure you—mischievous little imps—though they can be very sweet too, and seldom do real harm, and indeed, as a rule, a great deal of good. But for them your world would be dull and dreary.'
'Yes,' said Leonore, 'I should not like to live where everything was always quite still. And the little breezes are kind, aren't they? When it is very hot, it is lovely to feel one of them softly blowing round your face.'
'They are kind and tender too,' said the fairy; 'some of the gentlest among them are specially employed in refreshing poor sick people in their hot stifling rooms. They wait outside the windows patiently till they get a chance of entering. Then some of them spend most of their time in playing with little children, filling the sails of their tiny boats, or flying their kites and shuttlecocks for them.' While talking thus, the fairy had led them onwards. But now she stopped in front again of another silver gate.
'Inside here,' she said, 'is one of the nurseries of the little clouds; we let them out every now and then for a race. Would you like to see them? It is prettiest perhaps by moonlight, but I must not keep you here till night.'
She opened the gate, and out flew a crowd of feathery forms, dancing, leaping, tumbling over each other in their hurry to escape; then at a sign from the fairy, off they flew, upwards, a dozen or more together, in a whirl and flutter.
You can scarcely imagine anything prettier than it was.
They flew so high that for a minute or two they were out of sight, then back they came again, some much in advance of the others, till the first one who had gained the race floated down to the fairy's feet, taking shape as it did so till it grew into the shadowy form of a little cherub, smiling up with its sky-blue eyes for its reward.
'Well done,' said the fairy. 'Now off you can go, all of you, for an hour or two; some little streams are very thirsty to-day, I hear, and will be glad to see you.'
And at once the whole feathery troop disappeared. The children turned to the fairy with smiling delight.