r could recognise herself as a character in any of his
stories, and so at last she gave up reading them at all!

But one morning she came more near to giving up in utter despair than
ever before. Only the previous day she had been so hopeful! her father
had really seemed to be beginning to appreciate his little daughter, and
had presented her with sixpence in the new coinage to put in her
money-box. This had emboldened her to such a degree that, happening on
the following morning to hear him ejaculate 'Confound it!' she had,
pressing one hand to her beating heart and laying the other hand softly
upon his shoulder (which is the proper attitude on these occasions),
reminded him that such an expression was scarcely less reprehensible
than actual bad language. Upon which her hard-hearted papa had told her,
almost sharply, '_not to be a little prig!_'

Priscilla forgave him, of course, and freely, because he was her father
and it was her duty to bear with him; but she felt the injustice deeply,
for all that. Then, when she went up into the nursery, Alick and Betty
made a frantic uproar, merely because she insisted on teaching them the
moves in chess, when they perversely wanted to play Halma! So, feeling
baffled and sick at heart, she had put on her hat and run out all alone
to a quiet lane near her home, where she could soothe her troubled mind
by thinking over the ingratitude and lack of appreciation with which her
efforts were met.

She had not gone very far up the lane when she saw, seated on a bench, a
bent old woman in a poke-bonnet with a crutch-handled stick in her
hands, and this old woman Priscilla (who was very quick of observation)
instantly guessed to be a fairy--in which, as it fell out, she was
perfectly right.

'Good day, my pretty child!' croaked the old dame.

'Good-day to you, ma'am!' answered Priscilla politely (for she knew that
it was not only right but prudent to be civil to fairies, particularly
when they take the form of old women). 'But, if you please, you mustn't
call me pretty--because I am not. At least,' she added, for she prided
herself upon her truthfulness, 'not _exactly_ pretty. And I should hate
to be always thinking about my looks, like poor Milly--she's our
housemaid, you know--and I so often have to tell her that she did not
make her _own_ face.'

'I don't alarm you, I see,' said the old crone; 'but possibly you're not
aware that you're talking to a fairy?'

'Oh, yes, I am--but I