nough to the house
for her to call for aid. But a dreary rain set in and all the countryside
near Tania's prison house looked desolate. More than anything Tania
feared the return of Philip Holt. Once he got hold of her again, she knew
he would fulfill his threats.

During this dreadful time Tania had no human companion, but she was not
like other children. She was part little girl and the rest of her an elf
or a fay. The trees, the birds, and flowers were almost as real to her as
human beings. For, until Madge and Eleanor had found her dancing on the
New York City street corner, she had never had anybody to be kind to her,
or whom she could love.

Just outside Tania's window there was a tall old cedar tree. Its long
arms reached quite up to her window sill, and when the wind blew it used
to wave her its greetings. Inside the comfortable branches of the tree
there was a regular apartment house of birds, the nests rising one above
the other to the topmost limbs.

Tania held long conversations with these birds in the mornings and in the
late afternoons. She told them all her troubles, and how very much she
would like to get away from the place where she was now staying. However,
the birds were great gad-abouts during the day, and Tania could hardly
blame them.

There was one fat, fatherly robin that became Tania's particular friend.
He used to hop about near her window and nod and chirp to her as though
to reassure her. "Your friends will come for you to-day, I am quite sure
of it," he used to say, until one day Tania really spoke aloud to him and
was startled at the sound of her own voice.

"I don't believe you are a robin at all," she announced. "I just believe
you are a nice, fat father of a whole lot of funny little boys and girls.
I believe you are enchanted, like me. Oh, dear! I was just beginning to
believe that I wasn't a fairy after all but a real little girl with
pretty clothes and friends to kiss me good night." Tania sighed. "I
suppose I must be a fairy princess after all, for if I was a real little
girl no one would have cast another wicked spell over me and shut me up
in this dungeon in the woods, which is a whole lot worse than living with
old Sal."

Yet playing and pretending, and, worse than anything, waiting, grew very
tiresome to Tania. On the morning of the fourth day of her imprisonment
Tania awoke with a start. Something had knocked on her window pane. It
was only the old cedar tree, and Tania