and bugles,
then a glare of lights; and a great company, clad so grandly that they
shone with gold and jewels, came in open chariots, covered with gilding
and drawn by snow-white horses. The first and finest of the chariots was
empty. The old woman led Child Charity to it by the hand, and the ugly
dog jumped in before her. No sooner were the old woman and her dog
within the chariot than a marvelous change passed over them, for the
ugly old woman turned at once to a beautiful young Princess, while the
ugly dog at her side started up a fair young Prince, with nut-brown hair
and a robe of purple and silver.

"We are," said they, as the chariots drove on, and the little girl sat
astonished, "a Prince and Princess of Fairy-land; and there was a wager
between us whether or not there were good people still to be found in
these false and greedy times. One said 'Yes,' and the other said 'No';
and I have lost," said the Prince, "and must pay for the feast and
presents."

Child Charity went with that noble company into a country such as she
had never seen. They took her to a royal palace, where there was nothing
but feasting and dancing for seven days. She had robes of pale-green
velvet to wear, and slept in a chamber inlaid with ivory. When the feast
was done, the Prince and Princess gave her such heaps of gold and jewels
that she could not carry them, but they gave her a chariot to go home
in, drawn by six white horses, and on the seventh night, when the
farmer's family had settled in their own minds that she would never
come back, and were sitting down to supper, they heard the sound of her
coachman's bugle, and saw her alight with all the jewels and gold at the
very back door where she had brought in the ugly old woman. The fairy
chariot drove away, and never came back to that farmhouse after. But
Child Charity scrubbed and scoured no more, for she became a great lady
even in the eyes of her proud cousins, who were now eager to pay her
homage.

THE SELFISH GIANT

BY OSCAR WILDE

Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to
go and play in the Giant's garden.

It was a large, lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there
over the grass stood beautiful flower-like stars; and there were twelve
peach-trees that in the Springtime broke out into delicate blossoms of
pink and pearl, and in the Autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the
trees and sang so sweetly that the children used