er
than I, Geoffry Hamlyn?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

GOODY GRACIOUS!
AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

BY JOHN NEAL.

Once there was a little bit of a thing,--not more than so high,--and her
name was Ruth Page; but they called her Teenty-Tawnty, for she was the
daintiest little creature you ever saw, with the smoothest hair and the
brightest face; and then she was always playing about, and always happy;
and so the people that lived in that part of the country, when they
heard her laughing and singing all by herself at peep of day, like
little birds alter a shower, and saw her running about in the edge of
the wood after tulips and butterflies, or tumbling head-over-heels in
the long rich grass by the river-side, with her little pet lamb or her
two white pigeons always under her feet, or listening to the wild bees
in the apple-blossoms, with her sweet mouth "all in a tremble," and her
happy eyes brimful of sunshine,--they used to say that she was no child
at all, or no child of earth, but a fairy-gift, and that she must have
been dropped into her mother's lap, like a handful of flowers, when she
was half asleep; and so they wouldn't call her Ruth Page,--no indeed,
that they wouldn't!--but they called her little Teenty-Tawnty, or the
Little Fairy; and they used to bring her fairy tales to read, till she
couldn't bear to read anything else, and wanted to be a fairy herself.

Well, and so one day, when she was out in the sweet-smelling woods, all
alone by herself, singing, "Where are you going, my pretty maid, my
pretty maid?" and watching the gold-jackets, and the blue dragon-flies,
and the sweet pond-lilies, and the bright-eyed glossy eels, and the
little crimson-spotted fish, as they "coiled and swam," and darted
hither and thither, like "flashes of golden fire," and then huddled
together, all of a sudden, just underneath the green turf where she sat,
as if they saw something, and were half frightened to death, and were
trying to hide in the shadow; well and so--as she sat there, with her
little naked feet hanging over and almost touching the water, singing to
herself, "My face is my fortune, sir, she said! sir, she said!" and
looking down into a deep sunshiny spot, and holding the soft smooth hair
away from her face with both hands, and trying to count the dear little
fish before they got over their fright, all at once she began to think
of the water-fairies, and how cool and plea