why his eight brothers had never
thought of taking off the fairy shoes when they grew troublesome.

At last, though, Timothy began to feel tired. He hurt his foot on a
sharp stump. A fat green frog jumped up in his face and so startled
him that he nearly fell backwards in the water. He had gathered more
king-cups than he could hold. So he scrambled out of the marsh,
climbed up the bank, cleaned himself as well as he could, and thought
he would go on to school.

Now, with all his faults, Timothy was not a coward or a liar. With a
quaking heart he made up his mind to tell the teacher that he had
played truant. He was trying to make up his mind just exactly what he
would say first and had got no farther than, "Please, ma'am--" when he
found himself in the schoolroom, and under the teacher's very eye.
Timothy did not see her frown; he did not hear the children's titters.
His eyes were fixed upon the schoolroom floor, where--beside Timothy's
desk--stood the fairy shoes, very muddy, and with a yellow king-cup
sticking up out of each.

"You've been in the marsh, Timothy," said his teacher. "Put on your
shoes."

So Timothy put them on, and when his lessons were over, he let his
shoes take him straight home.

FALL

THE THREE APPLES

The old apple tree stood in the orchard with the other trees, and all
summer long it had stretched out its branches wide to catch the rain
and the sun to make its apples grow round and ripe. Now it was fall,
and on the old apple tree were three great apples as yellow as gold
and larger than any other apples in the whole orchard. The apple tree
stretched and reached as far as it could, until the branch on which
the three gold apples grew hung over the orchard wall. There were the
three great apples, waiting for some one to pick them, and as the wind
blew through the leaves of the apple tree it seemed to sing:

"Here in the orchard are apples three,
Who uses one well shall a treasure see."

And one morning Gerald came down the lane that passed by the orchard
wall. He looked longingly at the three gold apples, wishing, wishing
that he might have one. Just then the wind sang its song again in the
leaves of the apple tree and, _plump_, down to the ground, right at
Gerald's feet, fell one of the three gold apples.

He picked it up and turned it round and round in his hands. How sweet
it smelled, and how mellow and juicy it was! Gerald could think of
nothing so good to do with