DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?

The little girl ran and ran and let the wind blow her hair until it stood out behind her as though it were wired. The air was so clear and blue that she thought: “If I jump a little I will land on the top of that mountain over there.”

But she didn’t jump. It would have been taking a mean advantage of the mountain, she thought. She would just fly up the side of it, much as she was flying along the road now. And when she had gotten to the very topmost part, she would not deign to look down upon all the silly people in the valley—the people who just went on working, and didn’t have the sense to shout with joy because the sun was shining. She would reach up her hand, and feel the little fleecy cloud that was sitting so still and quiet, way up there. She would squash it between her fingers to see if it was wet or dry. And if it was dry, she would wrap it around her, to keep it warm forever, and would spend the rest of her days trying to catch, in a rose-colored bottle, the cold wind that went rushing past.

[Pg 8]

And so the little girl ran and ran.

The wind whistled at her speed. The dewy grass kissed her feet, and the cows in the meadows yawned as she passed.

Then she stumbled. A round smooth rock had rolled across her path: a granite rock, with specks that twinkled like bad men’s eyes. It was an orthodox rock—the sort that rarely rolled from its ledge. It growled:

“Look at this astounding young person’s behavior on a Sunday! The idea! A gentleman and a preacher should put an end to such goings-on.”

And so the smooth stone rolled in her path-way, and she stumbled and fell over it.

A discreet silence had settled over the countryside, just as though all the fields were on their best behavior. The rows and rows of conscientiously trained beets and onions drew themselves up in the pride of their posture. They too are very orthodox. They look down upon those of their vegetable brethren who have allowed themselves to be blown away from the straight and narrow path while still in the seed stage. It is fair, in a kingdom of stones, that these should do penance by eternal [Pg 9]excommunication from the pale. And thus pondering, in pious disgust, the beets and carrots were spending their Sunday.

The truant asparagus, long since reformed from rigid rows, was glorifying heaven in its own sweet way. It sprawled over the edge of its patch, as though to cover as much of the earth as possible—to be as near to her as possible. It does her honor, by dressing up in feathery finery to adorn her. It even catches the dew-drops, and roguishly uses them as pearls; for it makes its religion a perpetual pageant to glorify nature, and it scorns the priggish severity of the onion elders who have carefully stored up all their dew, for the cultivation of orthopedic roots.

These were the extremes of the vegetable Sunday behavior, and they are interspersed with just such in between stages as the meadows show,—a sort of tired business man-ish relief from the droning haying machines, and the hard cobble-stone wall.

Over the vegetable kingdom the round stones rule in their smooth sly fashion, appearing in the furrows to retard the busy harrower in his task, and censoring the human children’s play.

[Pg 10]

But past them all the Little Girl ran, laughing at the wind, brushing off the dirt that spotted her starched dress, and forgetting all about her bruises and scratches. On and on she ran, her eye fixed on the fleecy white cloud, her heart aching to fondle it, and her legs tireless in their never-ending race for the stars.

First of all there was Mildred, who was eleven, and quite sedate. Then there were the twins, Eveline and Madeline, who were eight and a half and eight and a half and ten minutes old, respectively, and who liked stories.

“Can you tell ’em?” Madeline inquired anxiously. She was curled up in my lap, and when she spoke she wrinkled up her nose in a funny little way that hid the one freckle on its tip that was the only means of distinguishing her from Eveline.

“I’ll try,” I offered.

“Make it about goblins, please,” ordered Madeline.

“And fairies,” Eveline added.

“And real people, too,” suggested Mildred who was, as I said, eleven, and almost beyond fairies, which was rather a pity.

“Once upon a time,” I started, and paused. A grown-up had interrupted us with some foolish grown-up question.

“Once upon a time,” again I began.

“You said that before,” objected Eveline.

“Yes’m,” accused Madeline.

[Pg 12]

“—Many, many years ago, there was a big forest, bigger than any you have ever seen.”

“’Scuse me, Ma’am, I know where there is a biggest forest.”

“Well, this was even bigger,” I insisted. “So big, in fact, that the leaves were as large as—as the flowers on that chair.” I finished pointing to the exaggerated tapestry on the furniture.

“Now at the edge of the woods there was a little village, where a blacksmith lived, with his only daughter, Hope.

“One day he sent Hope out into the forest to pick berries. As she went into the woods, by the little path which led from her house, there hopped out on it a little bunny—like the ones in the park, you know, excepting that this one had two tails.”

(“Why?” asked Madeline.

“To clean out his house with, of course,” explained Mildred.)

“Now, although Hope had walked in the forest ever since she was a little girl, she had never, never seen a bunny with two tails. So she followed this one. Further and further [Pg 13]she went, and darker and darker it grew, but Hope did not notice this, for she was too busy watching Mr. Two-tails.

“Suddenly he disappeared, and left her standing in front of a great, green-grey stone. It was very dark, and poor Hope was very much frightened. I would have been, too. Wouldn’t you?”

Three heads bobbed up and down energetically, and three pairs of eyes opened very wide.

“But she was a sensible little girl, and knew that the good fairies would help her. So she knocked on the stone. There started a whirring noise, as of wings.

“Say the magic word, and tell me your name,” sang a silvery voice.

“Hope,” said the little girl.

At this the stone opened, and she went into a beautiful little room, all lighted with fireflies and glow-worms. On the floor sat a fairy, busy mending a butterfly’s broken wing.

‘Do you live here all alone?’ asked Hope, as she drank honey and dew-drops which the busy ants had brought her.

[Pg 14]

“Yes,” sighed the fairy sadly. “I used to live with the forest goblins—”

“But they are bad,” interrupted Hope. “Father has told me stories about them.”

“Not bad!” reproved the fairy “but they did not like me to help the wood-land folks. They made me come here, and said they would keep every one from seeing me. Nobody can enter without the pass-word, Hope. And I cannot be free until a prince comes to sing to me.”

“The next morning the blacksmith awoke, and called Hope to him, but of course she did not come. He was very much frightened and called out all the village folk to help look for her. Then a strange thing happened. The blacksmith looked at the wall of his hut, and saw a message appear in letters of gold which said, ‘Whosoever shall find Hope shall be made by the fairies a Prince, and shall be given a beauteous castle.’

“The villagers started out, and with them a little apprentice lad searched too. Now, of course, the goblins kept every one away from the great green-grey stone, but in spite of all the goblin’s enchantments the apprentice lad came to the house of the fairy, because he had [Pg 15]followed a little two-tailed bunny. And when he got there he was so happy he just sang, and sang, and as he sang his coarse village clothes fell off him and the royal robes of a Prince appeared in their place.

“And so he took Hope back to the village with him, and the fairy flew out, singing and happy to be free. At the village there was great rejoicing, and they feasted at the Prince’s palace for a month and a day.”

“Didn’t they get sick?” inquired Mildred.

“And a few years later they were married.”

“And lived happily ever after?” asked Eveline, anxiously.

“And lived happily ever after!” I assured them.

There lived once upon a time, in the Land of Grown-ups, a very little boy. As soon as he was old enough to cry, which was when he was very young indeed, he began to cry for an adventure. But he always cried for it in baby talk, which Grown-ups cannot understand because they have forgotten it; and so nobody knew what he wanted. They gave him milk, and they spanked him. They sang to him and they rocked him, and they even showed him how the wheels in Daddy’s watch go round. But they did not give him an adventure, and so he kept right on crying, until bye and bye he came to be known as That Fretful Child, and everyone hated his parents.

Now there is only one person in all Grown-up Land who understands baby talk, and that is the Oldest Woman in the World. People say that she understands it only because she is so old that she has learned everything there is to know and is going back to begin all over again. And, since she is as wise as she is old, and equally as gossipy, she soon heard everyone talking about That Fretful Child.

[Pg 18]

She suspected that the baby wanted something very badly, and that that something was neither warm milk, nor a spanking, nor the wheels in Daddy’s watch. And she decided to find out what it was that he did want.

So she put on her grey cobweb scarf, which makes her invisible, and climbed up the handle of her carpet-sweeper, for she is a very modern Old Woman indeed. She grasped the handle of her carpet-sweeper, right where the shiny part ends, said a magic word, which I have forgotten, and Higgelley, piggelley, before you might say “I spy” three times without winking, she was driving up to the home of the Fretful Child with a fearful clatter.

Now the Fretful Child’s Mother was a regular sort of a Mother, excepting that on Sunday’s she always used silk handkerchiefs, embroidered with storks, and folded in thirds, instead of the linen ones folded in quarters that she used every day. When she heard the noise, and saw the carpet-sweeper drive up to the door she became very much excited.

“Look, Timothy,” she called to her husband, who is also the Baby’s Father, “Look at the carpet-sweeper I have found outside of the [Pg 19]door.” In Grown-up Land, you see, carpet sweepers do not always wander about by themselves.

Timothy, however was not impressed. He only said “Un-huh”, and went on reading his newspaper.

So the Fretful Child’s Mother took in the carpet-sweeper, and put it next to the Baby’s crib, for safe-keeping. Then, because the baby was crying very hard indeed, she hurried away to get him some warm milk, and left him alone to drink it, for she had learned by experience that he could not cry while he was doing this.

When she had gone, the Oldest Woman hopped down from the carpet-sweeper, and took off her cobweb scarf, which made her visible. Then she looked at the Fretful Child over her dark green spectacles, and said:

“Google de Goo.”

Now the Baby was so surprised to hear anyone besides himself speaking his language, that he stopped swallowing warm milk, right in the middle of a gulp, and simply stared. But, although this is generally considered very rude, the Oldest Woman paid no attention to it whatsoever, [Pg 20]and instead went right on to say something which translated means:

“What are you crying for, anyway?”

By that time the Fretful Child had stopped staring, and had finished his warm milk, and was able to tell her that he wanted an adventure, and that he wanted it badly.

Upon hearing this, the Oldest Woman became very serious indeed. She shook her head, and wiped away a tear which had settled on the rim of her green spectacles and was about to roll down her nose. Then she said:

“Doodle de doo,” which, as all babies know, means “You are very young indeed, but I will do the best I can for you.”

She told him that there are very few places where adventures still grow wild, for they have all been collected many years ago by a group of people called “Famous Persons”. However, she did know of one adventure tree that was just beginning to bear fruit. It was quite far away, but all that one needed to get there was a silk handkerchief embroidered with a stork. Now this was very fortunate indeed. For you see, the baby knew that once a week his Mother used to wipe his tears off with a silk handkerchief, [Pg 21]and he remembered that something on it sometimes used to bite him.

“It must have been a stork,” exclaimed the Oldest Woman, and at this she became so excited that her eyes twinkled behind her green spectacles.

In less time than it takes to tell about it, the baby was flying through the air on his Mother’s silk handkerchief, with his eyes tightly closed, and the Oldest Woman was astride a carpet-sweeper. He could feel the wind blowing through his hair, and the stars snapping at him as he went whizzing past. All the time the Oldest Woman kept saying magic words, and telling him not to open his eyes whatever he did, so that it all sounded something like this:

And all the voices of the night owls and snapping stars echoed

Until the Fretful Child felt very pale indeed.

[Pg 22]

When at last the Oldest Woman told him that he might look, he found that they had flown all the way to Nowhereland. He knew it was Nowhereland, by all the Nothings standing about. There were tall Nothings, and short Nothings, and fat Nothings, and thin Nothings, and they were all kept in order by Nobodies with grey dresses on. These Nobodies are very much like the people in Grown-up Land. Excepting that, as you will notice when you look at them very closely, their faces are made up entirely of cheeks.

The Fretful Child stared about very hard indeed. Then, because he couldn’t see any adventure tree, he was just beginning to take a long breath in order to cry. But he stopped short, just as his face was beginning to turn from pink to purple. For, right in the midst of the Nobodies stood the most beautiful adventure tree you ever saw. Its pale blue branches were weighed down to the place where the ground would have been, if there had been a ground in Nowhereland. And from even the lowest branches there hung luscious adventures that were dark red, and just right for picking. All about lay others that the wind [Pg 23]had blown down, or that the Nobodies had picked, tasted, and thrown away. But they had missed the very best of all. And this was perfectly natural, when you stop to think that the Nobodies have no eyes, and their faces are made up entirely of cheeks.

But the Fretful Child was not a Nobody. He had eyes. He saw the red adventures dangling there, and he squealed and crowed, and did all the things that fretful children never do. And then he picked one.

Now it is strange to tell about, but as soon as the Fretful Child bit into that adventure, he stopped being a Fretful Child, and became a Regular Boy. Even his skin, at that very moment forgot how to change from pink to purple, as it used to when he wanted to cry.

When the Nobodies felt what he was doing, they became very angry indeed, and shouted Nonsense at him, and threw Nothings at him. But these did not hurt him much, and so he went right on eating his adventure.

The adventure did not taste at all the way he thought it would, and it puckered his mouth all up. So he tried to hold his breath to make his face change from pink to purple, but it [Pg 24]wouldn’t do what he told it to. And then he knew that the adventure must have done something to him. He was not sure, but he strongly suspected that it must have changed him into a Regular Boy. So he stopped crying, even before he had let out the tiniest bit of a sound, and he smiled all over instead. And thereupon the Nobodies, feeling that some thing just hadn’t happened, dropped their nothings on the spot. And a brand new adventure bloomed on the tree, where the one the Fretful Child had eaten hung.

He squealed in glee, and looked around for the Oldest Woman, but as she was as wise as she was old, and equally as gossipy, she must have ridden away on her carpet-sweeper to tell her friends about it, for she was not to be found.

Just as he was wondering where she could have gone to, he felt a tugging at his right arm. It was the embroidered stork. Without a minute’s delay he climbed upon the handkerchief, stuck out his tongue at the Nobodies, which shows that he was a Regular Boy, and, higgelley, piggelley, before you might say “I spy” three times without winking, he was back in his own little crib.

[Pg 25]

His Mother was just coming to get the carpet-sweeper, which she had left beside the crib, for, you see, in Grown-up Land time passes much more slowly than in Nowhere land. There was a great to-do when she found that it was gone, but just as she was growing very excited about this, she noticed that the Fretful Child had stopped crying, and this made her even more excited (but in a different way) so that she forgot all about the carpet-sweeper. She rushed in to tell Timothy, her husband about it; but he was reading the newspaper, and only said “Un-huh.”

Soon all the neighbors came in to find out why That Fretful Child had stopped crying, and his Mother proudly told them that she had given him warm milk.

Whereupon all the neighbors shook their heads and opened their mouths very wide, and went home to feed warm milk to their Fretful Children, as they have been doing ever since.

L’Envoi

Once upon a time, in the days of long ago, when ogres and giants were as plentiful as policemen, and when the ocean was dotted with desert islands, there lived a Giant whose name was Gobble-me-up. As you may have guessed, he lived on one of these islands. All about him stretched ocean, and ocean, and more and more waves; but they didn’t bother him at all. He just lived there alone, and was very happy.

He was a great, large, burly giant, who would have stood over six feet tall in his stocking feet, if he had worn stockings. He had round red cheeks, and dancing blue eyes, and his hair curled itself up into “irrepressible locks” just like your favorite hero’s. He was comfortably fat, and when he laughed he shook all over, just the way the dessert that we have on Sunday does.

As I said, he was a very happy giant indeed, and he used to laugh and shake all over a [Pg 29]very great deal. You see, he never realized that he was all alone on his island, because he had never known what it would be like to have someone there to play with him. Every morning when he had finished his rhubarb, he used to walk along the seashore, dabbling his toes in the soapy waves, and singing:

When he came to this point he would always whirl about on his left heel three times, and clap his hands above his head.

Now at the particular moment when my story would be beginning if I hadn’t wasted all this time talking, Gobble-me-up was just setting out for his morning walk. He was tossing his head in the breeze ... it was the first day of Spring, you see ... and he breathed in the ozone, and enjoyed it, because he didn’t know that it was ozone. And, according to his habit, he began to sing:

[Pg 30]

when all of a sudden three clams that were lying on the beach opened their shells very wide, and laughed, in perfect rhythm:

Gobble-me-up looked about in surprise, and the clams continued to laugh in a way that was rude, even for clams.

Then Gobble-me-up became very angry ... no self-respecting Giant likes to be laughed at. He shook his curls at them, trying to look very fierce indeed. At last he sputtered:

(He was so angry, you see, that he leaped into free verse, a thing which had always been against his principles.)

When the clams had laughed until they could laugh no more, and had rolled over in the sand to wipe the perspiration off their [Pg 31]shells, the most imposing clam answered him.

“Ha! ha!” she said (I am quite sure it was a “she”), “the idea of a giant who only eats rhubarb ... he! he! ... the idea of his being called Gobble-me-up!”

At this all the other clams went off into wild gales of laughter, and snapped their shells to show how very funny they thought it was.

Gobble-me-up was perplexed. He didn’t quite know what they meant. But they did not intend to leave him in any doubt about this. They explained immediately, interrupting each other, and acting in a way that was very rude indeed.

They said that he ought to be a “very-cannibal-and-wear-a-red-sash-and-whiskers-and-eat-up-little-boys-and-girls” (they said it quickly, like that) and that he ought to go around muttering dreadful things like:

instead of reciting his silly little rhymes. They said that he should flourish a tomahawk, and dye his hair black, or at least train it to stand up on end. In fact they abused him horribly, [Pg 32]telling him that he was ruining the time-honored reputation of the race of Giants. Any Giant, they said, to be worthy of the name, should endeavor to represent all the Giants on every occasion. He, they said, was an unsatisfactory specimen, and therefore deserved to be squelched most effectively. This they felt to be their duty, and unpleasant though it was, it had to be done.

After this last remark, they sighed sadly, and retired into their shells.

From that moment on, Gobble-me-up was a changed giant. He hardly ever laughed, and when he sang his little song he put it in a minor key, which shows how very sad he was. Every morning he spoiled his rhubarb by weeping salty tears into it.

He felt that he really must do something.

He sat down on a log to think about it. He turned his toes inward so that they might console each other. He dug his elbows hard into his knees, and held his forehead in his hands. Then he said to himself:

This last thought seemed to appeal to him a great deal, even though the rhyme wasn’t very good.

But as he pondered it, he had a more awful thought. How could he act like a blood-thirsty Giant, and go about killing men, when he was the only creature that was anything like a man on the island?

It was a most disturbing idea, and for three days it bothered him. He grew paler, and proportionately thinner. He did not weep into his rhubarb now, but left it strictly alone.

And then he found a solution, and worked it out in a manner truly worthy of a Giant. This was what he did:

One night, when the moon was hidden and the stars were yawning and dropping off to sleep, one by one, he crept out along the beach. Without a sound, he crept up behind the three sleeping clams. Stealthily he reached out his left hand, took the youngest by its little neck [Pg 34]and squashed it. Noiselessly he stretched out his right hand, and grasped the second one. And with a maddened shriek of triumph he grabbed up the last clam, before it could snap its shell at him.

With an exalted countenance, he pranced up and down the beach, shouting his paean of victory, so that the stars stopped blinking, and the moon peered around the corner of a cloud to listen:

Whereupon he sat down on his log, and, one by one he ate the clams.

It didn’t matter at all that he had indigestion the next day. He knew that he really was an honest-to-goodness Giant, and the thought made him laugh and shake all over, just as he used to do in the good old days, before the clams had tried to disillusion him.

“I don’t like women,” said Richard of Brookline, and to prove it he sucked more violently upon a lavender lollipop.

Richard spoke with all the authority of one who has spent seven years living across the street from five fair ladies. One might mention that these seven years were his first spent anywhere, and that these fair but fearsome feminists ranged from six to sixteen. The locale was Brookline, and the time romantic summer—at this point my story begins.

Not long ago Richard wandered down the broad highway sucking upon his solitary lollipop, and wearing on his eyebrows the air of a world-weary capitalist. He did not offer to share his bounty with the ladies across the way, but did not object to having them watch him from their lollipopless porch. It was this haughty attitude that first made the Sleuth suspect him to be a woman hater.

And so the Sleuth set off upon his trail immediately, but Richard, like many a courtly gentleman, proved to be as diffident as he was bold.

[Pg 38]

“Why don’t you like women?” he was asked. And he replied:

“Because.”

“Because what?” the Sleuth persisted; whereupon Richard raised his eyebrows with an air of finality.

“Because I don’t,” he said.

“Don’t you like your Mama?” he was asked, and regarded the questioner scornfully.

“She isn’t a girl,” quoth he.

“But she probably was once!” The Sleuth hazarded a guess.

Alas, at this point Richard was called to bed. But the next day the argument was continued. It was after a nerve-racking game of puss-in-the-corner, when the assembled court had been astonished at the lion-hearted Richard’s chivalry. Twice had he surrendered his hard-earned corner to a fluffy little four-year-old blond. The Sleuth joshed him as man to man. But Richard smiled about it, and man-like waived present contingencies to speak glittering generalities.

“Girls,” he said, “are like fish.” But he omitted further details; and as he mused on the matter, his thoughts fell into metaphors. [Pg 39]“Like fish,” he repeated solemnly. And then he spied a crop of bobbed and almost masculine hair that was bouncing outside the hedge fence. “Or like hares. Some say that they are chickens, but I think that they are more like trees.”

“Because they wear fine feathers,” someone contributed.

“Certainly,” he agreed.

“But you don’t think they’re all shady, do you?” the Sleuth hastened to interpose.

“Most are,” he sighed.

And at this point he rose, to show that the interview was at an end, and, swinging his tin drum about his neck, he solemnly paraded down the block to that very masculine tune “Johnny get your Gun.”

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

Once upon a time before Caesar had conquered Britain, and therefore in the very early days indeed, there dwelt in southern England a princess named Talc. Her life was pampered and happy, just like the lives of all the princesses who lived a long time ago. Each day she sat by the edge of a pool of still green water, and allowed her handmaidens to comb her tresses (it was in the days, you see, when ladies wore tresses where most modern folk wear hair).

“I am very beautiful,” she remarked casually, glancing at herself in the pool, “but ...”

“Yes, indeed, Madam,” chorused the handmaidens, who did not realize that she was about to say more.

“Silence, wretches,” snapped the princess, squirting water at them with a lily white hand, and thereby mussing up her image in the pool. Then she continued in a low tragic tone: “I have a blemish, I tell you. My nose shines. Poets have written of brilliant eyes and gleaming teeth, but not one has mentioned a glittering nose. Therefore I know that the perfect nose does not shine. My beauty is ruined. Ah [Pg 44]woe is me, ah woe is me!” An she bowed her head forward, sobbing so violently that she pulled the pigtails out of her handmaidens’ grasp.

“No more,” she roared at them, as they started to reclaim the lost tresses. And then she sobbed as though her heart would break, “Oh my blemish, oh my nose, oh my nose, oh my blemish. Throw away your combs. I am going to tell the sea of my woe. I am going to walk along the cliffs. You may follow at a distance.”

She sprang to her feet, and hurried to the cliffs. She looked at the sea roaring on the rocks below.

“Oh sea,” she moaned in her grief, “what would you do if you had a nose and it was shiny?”

As she was thus bewailing she stumbled and fell upon the smooth, soft, chalky cliffs. When she lifted herself up she found that her hands were covered with a white dust.

“Arabella!” she called to her handmaiden, “bring me a bowl of water.”

Talc looked into the glassy surface of the water. Lo and behold her nose no longer [Pg 45]shone, but was white with a thick opaque whiteness!

“My beauty!” she exulted, “my beauty has returned! Arabella, you may get the comb and continue in the making of my royal pigtails. Neither my nose nor my chin shines. I am truly beautiful.” And she rejoiced until the tears flowed down her face, making furrows in their whiteness.

And thereafter each morning the princess and her handmaidens could be seen prostrate upon the cliff, solemnly rubbing their noses in its smooth dust.

“We had a table cloth, as white as the paint on the wall beside my kitchen stove, when it was new, five years ago. Ice tinkled in the glasses, but I saw every glass cloud up to hide the ice, because it costs an awful lot these days: They brought the turkey in,—it must have weighed twelve pounds. Its brown breast was so fat it seemed about to burst. It sizzled. Um. Then came the cranberry, all red and clear and quivery from its mold. A pianola played all the time, and we danced on the swell white tiles up to the cashier’s desk.

“I had on a picture hat, black velvet, trimmed with fur and cloth of gold, just like a movie star—that’s how I felt. Say, ain’t it queer, the things you dream about?”

A half a loaf of bread lay awry on a crumby and rumpled and mended table cloth where the breakfast dishes were stacked in crooked piles. The room was dark ... an oil stove in the corner made the hot air heavier. On the tubs, wrapped in towels, a tiny baby lay. The mother was speaking: and trying to wipe the wisps of hair out of her heavy eyes. She said: “Say, ain’t it queer the things you dream about?”

Christmas doesn’t come on the twenty-fifth of December. It begins with the first cold, snappy day, when ladies, fur-coated, and with unaccustomed red noses patter down Broadway. Tall fragrant pine trees, their branches roped in, are piled on the curbs. There are little stacks of very, very green stands, leaning against a box of rosy cheeked apples. Delivery boys bustle about, much more energetically than ever before. In the windows cauliflowers and half frozen beets cuddle in a bed of red crepe paper in an attempt to keep warm and cheerful. Next door the fish-man has garnished his wares with holly and eked a “Merry Christmas” on the frosty window pane. On the corner the Salvation Army girl stamps to keep warm and tinkles her little bell.

And it’s not even December twenty-fourth!

Footsteps paced down the hall—slow, meditative footsteps, with long intervals between them. Then there was a swish of skirts, and little pattering taps on the hard marble. Then both footsteps stopped, and I heard a high treble tittering, and a deep long-drawn out, but kindly roar. There was a clatter as though books had fallen on the floor—another titter, and rather a bored basso sigh. A bell rang. The pattering and swishing recommenced and faded out of earshot. The steady, determined strides drew nearer and nearer—and by that time the second bell had rung—and the door was slowly opened.

Then the fish all turn into girls, and the shimmery tale of the goldfish-in-chief changes into dance slippers. Soon her voice begins to call to you. It grows louder and louder. At last you realized that she is saying—

“Eight o’clock—time to get up!”

You heave a sleepy sigh and look at the clock. It says “eight o’clock” but it is probably fast. You turn over and try to remember that dream about goldfish. Or was it girls? Girls or goldfish? Goldfish or girls? They both begin with “g”. Queer, “g.” Stands for “goloshes” and “grapes” and “gloves” and—

“Ten minutes past eight.”

“All right,” you drone dutifully. (But you know it isn’t all right).

You turn on your back and stare at the ceiling. There is no use in getting up yet. You would spend so much time just dressing and undressing. Think of the hours people spend in clothing themselves. If all those minutes were laid end to end they would probably reach from their elbows to—

[Pg 73]

And then the door bell rings, and someone says something about mail.

Mail!

That’s different.

In a minute you are up and rushing into the hall-way.

“Mail!”

L’envoi

I staggered up the last step of the golden stairs and stood puffing and gasping. St. Peter came over to me and flapped his wings in my face. I noticed that the wings were all lettered—A.B.C.D.—I didn’t look further.

“Your admittance ticket,” he growled, and gloatingly fingered his keys. The largest was square and shiny—a Phi Beta Kappa Key.

I pulled a crumpled sheet of 8-¹⁄₂×11 paper from my pocket. St. Peter took it, slowly looked at it upside down, then sideways, then right side up.

“Un-huh,” said St. Peter at last, with celestial vagueness, “Un-huh,” he repeated wisely.

“May I ...” I whispered.

St. Peter turned around slowly, showing me a great expanse of wing.

“Close your eyes,” he said, “and pull out a feather, and while you are about it, take one for each of your little friends.”

“I can’t see which one to choose, if I close my eyes,” I objected most knowingly.

“It doesn’t make any difference which one you choose,” said St. Peter, “I only give them out as souvenirs. A feather doesn’t really help you to fly. It just gives you confidence. The rest is up to you.”