o have these for the
fairlies in my village!" making a sweep of her arm toward the encampment
of flower-pots; "if you want fairlies to stay close beside your bed, you
must give them horses to drive, 'cause when it gets cold weather cobwebs
gets too sharp for them to ride on and there isn't always fireflies 'n
candle worms to show 'em the way,--'n it's true, 'cause Larry says so!"
she added, probably seeing the look of incredulity on my face.

"Larry knows fairlies and they're really trulies; if you're bad to them,
you'll see the road and it won't be there, and so you'll get into
Hen'sy's bog! Larry did,--and if you make houses for them like mine
(pointing to the flower-pots) and give 'em drinks of milk and flower
wine, they'll bring you _lots_ of childrens! They did to Larry, so I'm
trying to please 'em wif my houses, so's to have some to play wif!"

Larry's harmless folklore (for when he is quite himself, as he is in
these days, he has a certain refinement and an endless fund of
marvellous legends and stories), birds and little beasts for friends,
dolls cut from paper with pansies fastened on for faces, morning-glories
for cups in which to give the fairies drink, what could make a more
blissful childhood for our little maid? That is the everlasting pity of
a city childhood. Creature comforts may be had and human friends, but
where is the vista that reaches under the trees and through the long
meadow-grass where the red-gold lily bells tinkle, up the brook bed to
the great flat mossy rock, beneath which is the door to fairyland, the
spotted turtle being warder. Fairyland, the country of eternal youth and
possibility!

I wouldn't give up the fairies that I once knew and peopled the solemn
woods with down in grandfather's Virginia home for a fortune, and even
now, any day, I can put my ear to the earth, like Tommy-Anne, and hear
the grass grow. It occurred to me yesterday that the Infant, in age,
temperament, and heredity, is suited to be a companion for your Richard.
Could you not bring him down with you before the summer is over? Though,
as the unlike sometimes agree best, Ian and she might be more
compatible, so bring them both and we will turn the trio loose in the
meadows of Opal Farm with a mite of a Shetland pony that _The Man from
Everywhere_ has recently bestowed upon the Infant--crazy, extravagant
man! What we shall do with it in winter I do not know, as we cannot yet
run into the expense of keeping such live