o this night that you danced with the Good People that first time.
All this year you have been with them there in the hill. If we had not
gone after you to-night, and if I had not known how to bring you back,
they would have taken you into the hill for another year, and you
might have stayed there, perhaps, as long as you lived."

"But, grandmother! A year! Why, you know it was yesterday!"

"Yesterday was a year ago," her grandmother said. "You can't
understand it now. Don't try. You must eat something now, and then you
must go to bed. To-morrow I can tell you about it better, and then
perhaps you can understand."

But Kathleen could not eat. Her going away had been so strange, her
coming back had been so wonderful, and what her grandmother had told
her had been so marvelous, that she could think of nothing else. By
and by she went to her room. While she was undressing she felt
something hard in her pocket. She took it out, and it was the little
box of ointment that the Queen had given her to put on the baby's
eyes. Now that she was at home again she felt as if she had dreamed
all that she had seen and heard while she was away. But she had not
dreamed it. Here was this little gold box to prove it. Yet she could
not believe it. And they told her that she had been away for a year!
What they said must be a dream too. But here was the little gold box,
just as the Queen had given it to her. It was a green salve that was
in it. She would open it and see if there really was a green salve. If
there was, then it was not a dream.

She opened it. There was the green salve. Yes, it was exactly as she
remembered it. And she could remember it all so well. She remembered
how the Queen had given it to her, and surely that was last night. She
remembered how she had touched the baby's eyes with the salve, and how
much brighter they had looked after she had done it. Surely it was
only this morning that she did that. It seemed to her all so plain.
And they said that it had been a year. She could not understand it at
all. She laid the little gold box on her bureau, under her glass, and
went to bed.

The next morning Kathleen could think about things a little more
clearly. She could not remember what she had seen and heard in the
hill quite so distinctly. She had not forgotten anything, but it all
seemed dimmer in her mind than it had been, as if it were long ago.
And still it seemed as if it had all happened yesterday. Everybody
whom