uld be unpleasant. All
that afternoon he was on the alert for a chance to slip into the
Pennells' garden, enter the shed and rescue the hidden sweets; but the
day was warm and pleasant, and Ruth and Winifred with their dolls and
Hero were out-of-doors playing about in the shade of the maple tree
until it was too late for Gilbert to carry out his plan; so that he was
as uneasy and troubled as Ruth or Winifred over the missing candy, and
not until evening could he think of any way to recover it.

He was just closing the stable for the night when he noticed the shallow
basket of woven grass and twigs which Winifred had made on the eventful
afternoon's journey along the river road. The violets and wild
honeysuckle were now only dried up stems; but the basket looked
serviceable and attractive. Gilbert smiled as he picked it up. He knew
now exactly what he would do: he would get up very early the next
morning, gather daffodils and iris and then take the basket to Mrs.
Pennell's shed,--take the candy from the molds, fill the box, and
setting the box in Winifred's grass basket cover it with flowers; then
he would hang it to the knocker of the Pennells' front door.

"The girls will think the fairies did it for a May-day surprise," he
chuckled to himself, remembering that Winifred could never quite decide
about fairies: if there really were such wonderful little people or not.

So Gilbert was up before sunrise the next morning, and with a friendly
word to Hero, found it an easy matter to enter the shed quietly and take
the candy and box from the bench drawer. In a few moments he had filled
the box skilfully without breaking one of the tiny hearts, set it in the
basket and covered it with the spring blossoms. He was just about to
leave the shed when he heard a voice, and peering out saw Ruth bowing to
the lilac tree and saying in a low voice:

"Fairies, fairies, here I bow.
Will you kindly pardon now
That I did not hear or see
When you came to visit me?"

"Jiminy! It's that old fairy story Mother tells; and Ruth believes it,"
thought Gilbert, as he watched Ruth bowing low to a startled robin,
which flew up to a higher branch in the hawthorn tree. She was so much
absorbed in what she was doing that she did not hear the stealthy step
behind her on the soft grass as Gilbert swiftly set down the mold pan
and the basket, and flew back to the shop. He had just reached its
shelter when Ruth turned to go back to