? I am so grateful to her and I have wished so much she might
know how much pleasure she has given me. I have found lovely flowers
and delicious berries on my path all summer; I feel sure she sent me
my party dress. But the dearest gift came last week on my birthday--a
little volume of my father's poems. I can't express what I felt on
receiving them. But I longed to meet my fairy godmother and thank her."

"Quite a fascinating mystery, isn't it? Have you really no idea who she
is?"

The Old Lady asked this dangerous question with marked success. She
would not have been so successful if she had not been so sure that
Sylvia had no idea of the old romance between her and Leslie Gray. As it
was, she had a comfortable conviction that she herself was the very last
person Sylvia would be likely to suspect.

Sylvia hesitated for an almost unnoticeable moment. Then she said, "I
haven't tried to find out, because I don't think she wants me to know.
At first, of course, in the matter of the flowers and dress, I did try
to solve the mystery; but, since I received the book, I became convinced
that it was my fairy godmother who was doing it all, and I have
respected her wish for concealment and always shall. Perhaps some day
she will reveal herself to me. I hope so, at least."

"I wouldn't hope it," said the Old Lady discouragingly. "Fairy
godmothers--at least, in all the fairy tales I ever read--are somewhat
apt to be queer, crochety people, much more agreeable when wrapped up in
mystery than when met face to face."

"I'm convinced that mine is the very opposite, and that the better I
became acquainted with her, the more charming a personage I should find
her," said Sylvia gaily.

Mrs. Marshall came up at this juncture and entreated Miss Gray to sing
for them. Miss Gray consenting sweetly, the Old Lady was left alone and
was rather glad of it. She enjoyed her conversation with Sylvia much
more in thinking it over after she got home than while it was taking
place. When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her
nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered
a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she concluded
that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a mean, unsociable
Old Lady, who had no friends, and who gave only five cents to the Sewing
Circle when everyone else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother,
the donor of beautiful party dresses, and the reci