*

"Sally! Sally!"

The little girl that had been listening under the hedge close to the
stone wall, jumped at the sound of her name.

Oh, dear! _must_ she go back to Slipside Row, and hear the scolding
voice of Mistress Cory Ann Brace, after being lifted almost into the
clouds, and having a tiny peep into Fairy Town?

Could she come back to earth again, and cook, and scrub, and sew, and do
all kinds of hard things, after hearing that wonderful scrap of glory
about the dear, beautiful creatures called the Fairies?

"Sally! Sally!"

"Yes, Mistress Cory Ann, I'm coming."

Swiftly back through Shady Path and Lover's Lane ran Sally, her frowsly
head full of the strange, sweet fragment of fairy song that she had
heard.

"Now, where've you been?" cried Mistress Cory Ann, as Sally came panting
into the Row. "Not up to Ingleside, I hope! I had to run way up the path
to make you hear. Haven't I told you more'n a hundred times you'd better
keep away from there? Just let the people up at the big house catch you
pokin' around, and back you'll come faster'n ever you went. Do you hear,
Sally Dukeen?"

Strange it would have been had not Sally heard, for Mistress Cory Ann's
voice was loud enough to have reached way across Lover's Lane. But Sally
answered truthfully.

"Yes, I hear, Mistress Cory Ann, and I have not been on the Ingleside
grounds at all."

No, she only had been roaming on the borders of the beautiful place,
then hiding close to the stone wall.

A poor, hard-worked little girl it was that had raced back to Slipside
Row. And no one to glance at her would have thought her pretty at all.

The people who lived in the row of houses were poor, but they all liked
Sally. Yet all they knew about her was that her father had boarded with
his little girl at Mistress Cory Ann Brace's house, when Mistress Brace
lived in another town, and in a much finer house than any at Slipside
Row. But he soon died, leaving his little girl, and some money, in
Mistress Brace's care.

No one knew about the money, however, except Mistress Brace herself, but
had it been used as it should have been, there would have been enough
to have lasted some time, paying for the child's coming needs. But
Mistress Brace hid it away, meaning to do with it exactly as she
pleased, while she still kept Sally, because, being a smart and willing
child, she could be of great use. Then Mistress Brace moved to a place
called "The Flats," where she lived