mine. It
would be a pity----"

"Oh, do go to the head fairy at once, Alb, and demand a cheap house for
my aunt to play dolls in," groaned Starr. "If he hasn't got one, he must
build it."

"He could easily do that," said I. "Every now and then a new island is
formed in this water-world, and the nearest householder seizes it,
claiming it as his own, on much the same basis that Napoleon claimed
the Netherlands. Then he digs it into an extra garden or strawberry bed.
But he would sacrifice his vegetables if he saw a prospect of making
money. It might amuse Lady MacNairne to do a little amateur market
gardening, though they say slugs are unusually fat and juicy in
Aalsmeer."

"Oh! Maybe I'd better wait and see a few more places before I decide,
then," exclaimed the lady. "Not that I'm afraid of slugs myself, only
I'm sure they wouldn't agree with Tibe. And besides, it would be dull
for him in winter."

"Not at all," said I, having discovered that the one possible way of
detaching the lady from a pet scheme is by advising her to cling to it.
"Everybody skates then, instead of going about in boats, and no one has
really seen Aalsmeer who hasn't seen it on a winter evening. Then, in
front of each island, on a low square post, is set a lighted lantern.
Imagine the effect of a double line of such lights all the way down the
long, long canal, each calling up a ghost-light from under the blue
ice."

The tyrant shivered. "It sounds lovely," she said; "but I think I _will_
wait. Come, girls, we'd better be getting back to the boat."

"Sweet are the uses of an Albatross," I heard Starr murmur.

We turned our backs on the water fairies' domain, and went into the
world again. In the long commonplace street of shops through which we
had passed in coming, Aunt Fay stopped. She had torn a silk flounce on
her petticoat, and would thank me to act as interpreter in buying a box
of safety-pins. I made the demand, and could not see why the two girls
and their chaperon had to stifle laughter when an earnest, flaxen-haired
maiden began industriously to count the pins in the box.

"She says she has to do that, because they are sold by the piece," I
explained; but they laughed a great deal more.

It was a pity they could not see the meer which rings in their
fairyland--a meer dotted with high-standing, prim little islands,
which, though made by nature, not man, have much the same effect, on
a larger scale, as the clipped box-trees on s