“Flying like this is such fun that I don’t care where we go,” answered Jamie, then suddenly both leaves—but let us say boys—stopped drifting and gazed in wonder at the sight before them. They were in the sunshine, but a shower was falling in the distance and opposite them, across the sky, stretched a perfect rainbow.
“Did you ever hear of the pot of gold at the rainbow’s foot?” asked Jamie excitedly. “Let’s go there now and find it!”
“All right,” answered the little King, “let’s go there, and if we don’t find the pot of gold we may find something still more wonderful.”
Through the air they flew toward the rainbow, whose colours were paling a little in the center, but growing more and more glorious at the end.
“Shut your eyes again and hold my hand tight,” said the King. “I must fill your eyes with mist or you would be blinded by the sight you are going to see. No boy has ever seen it before except in dreams.”
For a moment Jamie shivered, they seemed to be passing through a thick fog, and then—“Open your eyes,” cried the King. Jamie looked——
Picture to yourself a great golden hall filled with streams of colours, each as radiant as the sunshine, and yet, seen through spectacles of mist, so soft they could not dazzle your eyes. Each great sheath of colour was moving, shifting and weaving itself in and out among the others like the figure of a dancer, so quickly that it was almost impossible to catch it. And yet that was just what hundreds of gay little fairies with butterfly wings and scarfs of thistle down were trying to do. Each one carried a golden pot, and as they caught one colour after another their captives rushed away, leaving a bit of colour in the fairy’s hand. Hastily dropping that bit into his golden pot with a merry, tinkling laugh, the fairy was off again after another dancing, gleaming bit of rainbow.
“So there are the pots of gold,” cried Jamie. “But what do the fairies do with the rainbow’s colours?”
Just then a very merry sprite came tearing past, his pot brimming over with glowing crimson. “My colour is the favourite just now,” he cried. “I’ve got one billion trees to paint and all that’s left over goes to the cardinal flowers.” “Mine is just as popular,” sang out another fairy, his pot overflowing with gold. “There are millions of goldenrods for me to colour as well as the trees!” “And autumn loves mine too,” chanted a delicate little sprite whose pot was filled with violet. “Think of all the asters without which your goldenrods would be very tiresome.” “And mine,” rippled another, his pot filled with blue like the sea. “Autumn always wants mine! The gentians are rare because one blossom takes more colour than a thousand of spring’s forget-me-nots.”
Just then a flaming orange stream rushed past, and Jamie and the little king made one grab at it.