e the bee. To say that
the fairy was surprised when he displayed these things, would be a
feeble use of language. She opened her large eyes until Willie begged
her in alarm not to open them wider for fear they should come out, at
which sally she laughed, and then, being weak, she cried.

After that she fell in with her nurse's humour, and the two proceeded to
"have a night of it." Ziza said she'd be a real fairy and tell him what
to do, and Willie said he'd be a gnome or a he-fairy and do it.

At the outset Willie discovered that he had forgotten coals, but this
was rectified by another five minutes' airing, and a rousing fire was
quickly roaring in the chimney, while the kettle sang and spluttered on
it like a sympathetic thing, as no doubt it was. Willie cleared the
small table that stood at the invalid's bed side, and arranged upon it
the loaf, the tea-pot, two cracked tea-cups, the butter and sugar, and
the wax-candle--which latter was stuck into a quart bottle in default of
a better candle-stick.

"Now, ain't that jolly?" said the nurse, sitting down and rubbing his
hands.

"Very!" replied the patient, her eyes sparkling with delight.

"It's so like a scene in a play," continued Willie.

"Only much more real," suggested the fairy.

"Now, then, Ziza, have a cup o' tea, fresh from the market o' Chiny, as
your dad would say, if he was sellin' it by auction. He's a knowin'
codger your dad is, Ziza. There. I knowed I forgot somethin' else--the
cream!"

"I don't mind it, indeed I don't," said Ziza earnestly.

Willie had started up to run out and rectify this omission, but on being
assured that the fairy liked tea almost as well without as with cream,
and that there was no cream to be got near at hand, he sat down again
and continued to do the honours of the table. First he made the fairy
sit up in bed, and commented sadly on her poor thin neck as she did it,
observing that she was nothing better than a skeleton in a skin. Then
he took off his own jacket and put it on her shoulders, tying the arms
round her neck. Next he placed a piece of board in front of her, saying
that it was a capital tray, and on this he arranged the viands neatly.

"Now, then, go at it, Ziza," he said, when all was arranged.

Ziza, who received his attentions with looks that were wonderfully
gleeful for one in her weak state of health, went at it with such vigour
that the bread was eaten and the tea drunk in a few minutes, and