it. There were women, too; women with loud voices and a curious twist
to their tongues. They heard my voice, some of them seemed even to
understand what I cried. For I heard them exclaim and wonder and talk
of the Fairy Folk. The first time that this happened I was hopeful.
Surely, I said to myself, they know the Fairies. They say that they
come from a Green Land where many Fairies live. Surely, surely they
will love the Little Men of another country. They will understand why
I long for green grass and blue sky and fresh air. They will help me
to escape. But no! They were cowards. They screamed and fainted when
I spoke from the old well. They must have had wicked hearts, for they
feared the Fairies. They dared not come near, but complained to the
master and mistress, and would not live in the same house with me.”
“Silly things!” said Rob. “Katie was one of them.”
“So to please them the well was covered,” sighed the Fairy, “and then
it was worse than ever. Think how dark, how lonely, how ugly a home it
was for an Indian Fairy who loved the free, open life of outdoors! Oh,
for the green woods, the sunshine and blue sky! The song of birds and
the odor of flowers! Oh, to feel the soft green moss, and taste the
dew fresh in the morning! Please let me out, kind boy, that I may know
those joys again!”
“Dear Fairy,” said Rob hesitatingly, “I am so sorry, but to find all
these things, save the sky and air, one must now seek far from here.
The White Men have driven them away, just as they drove the Indians,
the squirrels, and the rabbits. There is no green grass, there are no
flowers, no moss, no ferns on all the Hill.”
“What do you tell me!” cried the Fairy. “My Hill is no longer
beautiful?”
“It is beautiful,” said Rob. “At least, the White Men call it so. But
the wigwams are thick and very tall, shutting out the sunlight from the
paths between. And these paths are dusty, hard streets, with neither
grass nor trees nor flowers.”
“Oh, why do White Men try so hard to make the world ugly?” wailed the
poor Indian Fairy. “How can they live away from the woods and the
flowers and the beautiful, beautiful green grass! Where shall I go?
What shall I do?”
Rob thought and wondered, and thought again. And at last he had an
idea. “There is a green country not so very far from here,” he said.
“One goes there in an electric car,--but you don’t know what a car is.
Never mind. I went there yesterday and brought away some beautiful
ferns, growing in the mossy earth.”
“Oh, that I might see them!” cried the Fairy eagerly. “One sniff of
leafy mould, one breath of the woods lingering about the tufted moss!
To lie once more in the shadow of a fern and feel its freshness on my
face! Where is this woodsy wonder?”
“It is upstairs in my bedroom,” answered Rob. “Will you come with me?”
The Fairy hesitated, looked at the pail of water resting beside the
well, and brightened with a sudden thought.
“Yes!” he cried. “I know what may be done. You can set me free, kind
boy, you only, of all the folk who have come to the Indian spring
since the Red Men left it. The spell which binds me to the spring and
chains me beneath the roof can only be broken when the water is set
free again to mother earth. Yesterday I came near to being emptied
into the horrible sewer. You heard my cry as the first of the water
was lost. You saved me. For had the pail been emptied then I must have
followed. And to what a fate!”
“It empties at last into the ocean,” said Rob.
“And that would have been the end of me,” shivered the Fairy. “Salt
water is the one thing which would destroy me utterly. But come now. I
know how I may be freed. Take the pail of water and bring me with it to
the blessed clump of ferns.”
Rob agreed; he took up the candle in one hand and the pail of water in
the other. Lightly as a bird the Fairy sprang upon the rim of the pail,
clinging to the cord. And so they went together up out of the cellar,
through the empty kitchen and dining-room; very softly up the stairs,
past the library of silent-talking books; up and up, very, _very_
creepily past the bedroom door ajar, whence Rob heard the sound of his
father and mother snoring peacefully; up and up and up, tiptoeing so as
not to wake Katie, to Rob’s own chamber. And there on the window-seat
stood a big flower-pot with the beautiful ferns which the day before
Rob had dug up in the woods. The Fairy smelled them as soon as he
entered the room.
“Ah!” he cried, laying both little hands on his breast, “How good that
is! Dear boy, empty the water quickly from the pail into the earth
brought from the woods, and I shall be free to lie under my dear ferns
once more.”
Rob emptied the pail into the flower-pot. And as the last drop of water
trickled from the bucket, with a glad cry that sounded like the tiniest
of Indian war-whoops, the Fairy leaped into the moist little dell which
the ferns made, and curled up against one of the stalks, hugging it
lovingly.
“Dear fern!” he cried. “Dear woodsy fern! How sweet you smell. Dear
moss, how soft you are! Dear fragrant earth, made of dead leaves and
all the ripe finished things of the forest! Oh, I am myself once more.
Dear boy, you have made me very happy.”
“And you will live here with me in my chamber, always and always, dear
Fairy?” begged Rob eagerly. “That will be so good! I shall be happy
indeed to have you for my little neighbor. And I will never, never tell
any one about you, nor let them disturb your green home.”
The Fairy looked at Rob and sighed. “Little friend,” he said, “I love
you dearly. I would gladly make you happy. But I have yet one more
thing to ask of you. Think of it! Even now I am shut under a White
Man’s roof,--I, an Indian Fairy! So many years in a foreign wigwam,
walled in a dark, skyless well! Oh! Let me go back to the green wood.
Let me be free once more like the rabbits and the squirrels. Will you
set me free, even though it means that you will never see me again?”
Rob looked at the Fairy and his lip trembled. “I hoped”--he began. But
he took a long breath and said to himself, “I will not be selfish. I
will be kind and do as I would be done by.” Then he spoke aloud. “Tell
me how I may set you free, dear Fairy, and I will do it.”
“Ah, my kind friend!” cried the Fairy, “I knew you would be generous!
This, then, you shall do for me. I will sleep to-night in your chamber,
and to-morrow, when the sun is high, you shall take up the ferns out
of the flower-pot, these ferns all moist with the water of the Indian
spring. You shall take them up, and me with them,--though you will not
see me after daylight,--and carry them to the woods whence you took
them. And when you set them back in the ground of the forest where they
grew, then I shall be free, free, free! Oh, dear boy, will you do this
for me?”
“Yes, I will do this for you,” said Rob gravely.
“Thanks, thanks!” cried the Fairy. “And now, the night is almost
done. I think I feel the daylight coming. You will see me no more.
But I shall be sleeping soundly under the fern. And do you likewise
go to rest in your little bed. Look! You are shivering with cold! But
to-morrow do not forget your promise.”
“I will not forget,” said Rob, feeling indeed very cold and shivery. He
crept away to his little bed, and was soon sound asleep, warm and comfy.
III
It was late when Rob woke the next morning. At first he thought that
the adventure with the Indian Fairy must have been a dream. But as
soon as he sat up in bed he saw the tin pail on the floor beside the
window-seat, and the fern moist and green in the flower-pot. So he
knew that it must all have been true. But he could not see the Fairy
himself, though he knew that the little fellow must be snugly curled up
under the green fronds of the fern.
When he came down to the breakfast table his father and mother were
talking earnestly about something.
“It is a wonder he wasn’t killed!” said his Mamma, shuddering. “Why did
you ever show him that dreadful well?”
“I shall have the cover screwed down,” said Mr. Evans. “It really isn’t
safe. Hello, Son! You walked in your sleep again last night, did you
know it? I suppose you don’t remember. But Mamma found one of your
slippers outside the library door this morning, and Katie found the
other on the cellar stairs. And Rob! _The cover of the old well was
open!_ However did you lift it?”
“I don’t remember how I lifted it,” said Rob, quite truthfully, and he
looked dazed.
“Well, we can’t have this, you know,” said his father. “I shall have to
lock your door every night. But we will have that old well screwed up
hereafter. Perhaps that will satisfy Katie, though I think she will not
be troubled with any more noises in the wall. She says that there was a
big, big rat dead in the trap this morning.”
And indeed, nobody ever heard any more noises in the cellar after Rob
helped the Indian Fairy to escape. That very morning, right after
breakfast,--for it was a Saturday and there was no school,--he dug up
the ferns which he had planted in his flower-pot, and put them in a
little basket with the earth around their roots. Then he started to
take the electric car which would carry him out of town to the woods.
“Where are you going, Rob?” asked his Mamma, seeing him with cap in
hand.
“I am going to take my ferns back to the woods,” Rob answered. “I think
it is cruel to keep things that love the sunshine and the fresh air
shut up in a house. I am sure that the ferns would much rather be back
in the woods, don’t you think so, Mamma?”
“Well, I am sure I never thought of that!” said his Mamma. “But you may
go if you will be back in time for dinner.”
[Illustration: ROB AND THE INDIAN FAIRY]
So Rob took the ferns to the woods and set them back in their first
home under a big gray rock, the prettiest little spot in the world for
a Fairy to dwell! But he saw nothing more of the Indian Fairy, though
he looked and looked; and after he had started for home, went back
there again three separate times to look, because he hated to part from
his little new friend. But the last time he heard, or thought he heard,
a very tiny, far-off, trickly voice say,--
“Farewell, my friend! Farewell! I am free, free, free! And you shall
always be happy when you come to the woods, even if you never see me.
For I will make this charm about you, because you were kind. Farewell,
farewell!”
And this was the last that Rob ever heard of the Indian Fairy, though
he went often and often to that same place in the woods; but the Fairy
charm did indeed prove true, and Rob was always very, very happy as
soon as he came into the woods, happier than he was anywhere else.
FAIRIES
If I should see a Fairy,
I should not be afraid,
I know so much about them,
From all that I have read.
I’ve planned how I would greet them,
And what I ought to say;
I’d have my Wish all ready,
To save the least delay.
I sometimes feel them near me,
But still I cannot see.
I wonder, oh! I wonder,
Are they afraid of me?
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
THE FLOWER PRINCESS
By ABBIE FARWELL BROWN
“Here is a return to the gracefully romantic fairy stories we all
used to love. Four tales of adventure in the country where the unreal
touches upon the real, prettily illustrated and written with the
literary skill that always appeals to the good taste of a child.”
_The Outlook, New York._
“Delicate fancy and humor have gone into the making of these pretty
tales for children, which prove again Miss Brown’s title to be numbered
among the story-tellers mothers may depend upon.”
_The Christian Register, Boston._
Illustrated. Square 12mo, $1.00.
HOUGHTON
MIFFLIN
& COMPANY
[Illustration]
BOSTON
AND
NEW YORK
By ABBIE FARWELL BROWN
IN THE DAYS OF GIANTS
“Miss Brown relates some of the bravest tales from the brave old sagas
of the Northland. They have an enchantment which appeals particularly
to the youthful mind.”
_New York Globe._
Illustrated by E. Boyd Smith.
12mo, $1.10, _net_. Postpaid, $1.21.
THE BOOK OF SAINTS AND FRIENDLY BEASTS
“There is a very tender, sympathetic charm about the book. Miss Brown
has chosen a score of stories concerning saints and animals to tell
again simply and with a pretty choice of word and phrase.”
_London Times._
Illustrated by F. Y. Cory.
12mo, $1.25.
HOUGHTON
MIFFLIN
& COMPANY
[Illustration]
BOSTON
AND
NEW YORK
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.