Where did you used to see them? asks WALTER, still excited.
Right here in this room, answers GRANDFATHER. There used to be two of them, when I was a boy; and often I would see them, though none of the grown-up people could see them at all. During the daytime they
used often to hide in the wood-box over there: and then at night, they used to come out and play. And sometimes they worked, too, for I can remember my father saying sometimes in the morning, "The floor looks so clean that I think the brownies must have swept it last night."
But, Grandfather, says WALTER, for there is one thing about this that puzzles him, I'm a little boy, and I've never seen the brownies.
No, not yet, GRANDFATHER admits, but I think you're likely to any time now. You see, they don't show themselves to very little boys, for fear of frightening them.
GERTRUDE, who has been listening carefully to all of this, has a question to ask. Grandmother, she says, did you see the brownies, too, when you were a little girl?
No, indeed, answers GRANDMOTHER. The brownies never wanted any girls to see them. But I used to see the house-fairies often, and they always hid away from the boys, so that only we girls ever saw them.
How many house-fairies were there, Grandmother, asks GERTRUDE eagerly, and where did you see them, and what did they do?
My, what a lot of questions! GRANDMOTHER says, smiling at Gertrude's excitement. There were two of them at our house, and they lived in the kitchen just as the brownies did here. They used to hide in a big clothes basket very much like that one over there. At night, like the brownies, they used to do some of the house-work to help mother; and how pleased she used to be, when she found in the morning that some of the work had been done for her while she was asleep.
Do you suppose, says WALTER, that if I woke up some