in the other house. This toast is as warm as--toast"--she
concluded, not knowing exactly how to end her simile.

"Your face looks as warm as toast, too," remarked her Father.

"Yes, Papa, that's because I toasted to-night. Dinah was bringing the
clothes from the lines, so she let me."

"I stamped the butter, Papa," added Lulu. "Look, isn't it a pretty
little pat?"

"And I sifted the sugar for the blackberries," put in Bertha from her
place at Mamma's knee.

"You don't mind, do you Mamma?" observed Mary anxiously. "Di pinned a
big apron over my frock. See, it hasn't got a spot on it."

"I'm glad she did," said Mrs. Frisbie, surprised. "But it doesn't matter
so much how you dress here, you know. It was in the other house I was so
particular."

"But I like to please you, Mamma, and you always want us to look nice,
you know. We mean to be very careful now, because if we don't we shall
worry you all the time."

Mrs. Frisbie put her arm round Mary and kissed her.

"I declare," she said, half-laughing, half-crying. "This house _is_
pleasant. It seems snugger somehow, as if we were closer together than
we ever were before. I guess I shall like it after all."

"Hurrah!" cried Prince John, rousing from his fatigue at these
comfortable words. "That's right, Molly, dear! You don't know what good
it does me to hear you say so. If only you can look bright and the
chicks keep well and happy, I shall go to work with a will, and the
world will come right yet." He smiled with a look of conscious power as
he spoke; his eyes were keen and eager.

I think that just then, as the children gathered round the table, as
Mrs. Frisbie took up the teapot and began to pour the tea, and her
husband pushed back his chair,--that just then, at that very moment, the
Fairy entered the room. Nobody saw her, but there she was! She smiled on
the group; then she took from her pocket another bubble, more splendid
than the one she had brought before, and tossed it into the air above
Prince John's head. "There," she said, "catch that. You'll have it this
time, and it won't break and go to pieces as the first one did. Look at
it sailing up, up, up,--this bubble has wings, but it sails toward and
not away from you. Catch it, as I say, and make it yours. But even when
it _is_ yours, when you hold it in your hand and are sure of it, you'll
be no luckier and no happier, my lucky Prince, than you are at this
moment, in this small house, with love about y