Then she folded her white wings, and nestled in the lady’s bosom like a gentle dove, and was borne to a beautiful castle that overlooked the sea. The water-nixies soon forgot her, for they could not hold her memory in their little humming-bird hearts.
She was not of their race. Her wings were soft and transparent, like those of a white butterfly; and she ever declared that she had once alighted from a cloud, and been caught in a nixie’s net spread upon the grass.
But, in time, her wings dwindled and disappeared; and then the lord, who was now her father, could not remember that she had ever been other than an earthly child.
“You fancy you were once a sylphid,” said he; “but there are no sylphids, my sweet one, and there is no Summer-land.”
The child became as dear to the lord and lady as their very heart’s blood; and they forgot her foreign birth, and almost believed, as all the world did, that she was their own little daughter. But the child did not forget. She longed for the true home she had left; but whither should she go to seek it?
“Dear papa,” said she, one day, “I beg you will not say again there are no sylphids; for I remember so well how I spread my wings and flew. It was glorious to see the clouds float under my feet!”
“Very well,” said the lord; “if you like, I will say there are sylphids in the air, and trolls inside the earth; and, once on a time, I was myself a great white butterfly: do you remember chasing me over a bed of roses?”
“O papa, now you laugh! I love the twinkle in your eye; and I am so glad it is you, and no one else, who is my papa; but just the same, and forevermore, I shall keep saying, I was a sylphid!”
Sometimes, when she set her white teeth into some delicious fruit, she said with dreamy eyes,—
“These grapes of Samarcand came across the seas; but they are not so sweet as the fruit in my own garden, mamma.”