lady as their very heart's
blood; and they forgot her foreign birth, and almost believed, as all
the world did, that she was their own little daughter. But the child
did not forget. She longed for the true home she had left; but whither
should she go to seek it?

"Dear papa," said she, one day, "I beg you will not say again there
are no sylphids; for I remember so well how I spread my wings and
flew. It was glorious to see the clouds float under my feet!"

"Very well," said the lord; "if you like, I will say there are
sylphids in the air, and trolls inside the earth; and, once on a time,
I was myself a great white butterfly: do you remember chasing me over
a bed of roses?"

"O papa, now you laugh! I love the twinkle in your eye; and I am so
glad it is you, and no one else, who is my papa; but just the same,
and forevermore, I shall keep saying, _I was a sylphid_!"

Sometimes, when she set her white teeth into some delicious fruit, she
said with dreamy eyes,--

"These grapes of Samarcand came across the seas; but they are not so
sweet as the fruit in my own garden, mamma."

"And where is your garden, my child?"

"Oh, in the Summer-land. I always forget that you have never seen it.
When I go there again, mamma, I will certainly take you too; for I
love you with all my heart. I can never go without you."

When she heard the evening-bells from the minster, she said, "Oh, they
are like the joy-bells at home, only not so sweet. Nothing, here, is
so sweet. Even my dear mamma is not so lovely as the lady who comes
when I am asleep."

Little One--they called her Little One for the want of a name--loved
to prattle about the wonders of that mysterious fairy-land, which no
one but herself had ever seen. Her mother would not check her, but let
her tell her pretty visions of remembered rainbows, and palaces, and
precious gems. She said,--

"The child has such a vivid fancy! It is not all of us who can see
pictures when our eyes are shut."

But the lord was not so well pleased; and once, when his daughter
looked at a frozen stream and murmured, "_We_ have the _happiest_
rivers at home; they sing all day long, all the year, without
freezing! Can I find that Summer-land again! Oh, I would creep all
over the world to seek it," he replied,--

"Little One, it is some cloud-city you are thinking of, some
dream-land, or isle of Long Ago, which you will never see again. I beg
you to forget these wild fancies."

But still the