Once upon a time, and a long time ago, and a long, long time before
that, a little old woman had a garden. And in this garden she planted
a beautiful bed of tulips. The slim green stalks of them stood in the
earth, tall and straight. And every other row of lovely cups they held
was red and every other was yellow. At twilight the little old woman
patted down the last of them, and went in to boil the kettle for her tea.
Now, as soon as she was gone there came peeping and tripping from the
field near by a crowd of pixies. They ran between the rows, and skipped
from one flower to the next, and put their slender fingers down into the
cups, and clapped their fairy palms together and cried, “How lovely!” But
the little old woman drinking her tea before the fire didn’t hear a word.
Well, night came, and the pixies’ teeny weeny bits of elfin babies grew
sleepy. They must have bawled, though of course big ears like yours and
mine couldn’t have heard them, for all of a sudden all the little pixies
scampered home, crying,
“Coming,
My teeny one,
Coming,
My weeny one,
Watch glowworm
Bright,
My speck of delight!”
And then the cleverest little pixie mother among them thought of
something. “Let’s lay them in those lovely cradles,” said she; “they’ll
be as safe as a bug in a rose while we are greeting the queen.” She at
once picked up her baby and ran back with it to the garden. And so did
the others with theirs. They laid the tiny babies in the tulip cups and
sang them to rest. The tulips rocked to and fro in the wind and made
music for the lullaby. The little old woman washing her teacup caught a
note of the music and singing, and stopped her clatter to listen, it was
so sweet.
As soon as the elfin babies were fast asleep, the pixies tripped lightly
off on the very tiptop tips of their toes. The silver Moon was rising,
and they were just in time to form a ring on the green and dance in her
honor. They circled nine times and then looked up at her, and she beamed
down on them and they bowed low. Then she passed on through the heavens
to make way for the day.
It was now the dawn of morning. The pixies ran back to the tulip cradles
in the little old woman’s garden, crying,
“Weeny
Sleepy head,
Leave
Dewy bed,
Time
To get up
From
Soft tulip
Cup.”
The little old woman awoke in the nick of time to hear them kissing and
caressing the elfin babies as they carried them home. In a bound she was
out of bed and at the window, but they had vanished.
For all that she knew they had been there. She could tell it by the
tulips. The slim green stalks of them stood in the earth, as they had
when she planted them, tall and straight. And every other row of lovely
cups they held was red and every other was yellow. Yet there was a
wonderful change. It wasn’t only the shining drops of dew on them. No, it
was something more wonderful—it was fairy fragrance. Every tulip smelled
as sweet as a rose. This was the pixies’ thanks to the little old woman.
News of these rare tulips went far and wide, and people came from here,
there, and everywhere to buy them. So for the rest of her days the little
old woman had plenty of money for many a cup of tea, and a pinch of snuff
into the bargain.
—ANGELA M. KEYES