them. You might have seen his eyes twinkle, therefore,
when Clover, Sweet Fern, Cowslip, Buttercup, and most of their
playmates, besought him to relate one of his stories, while they were
waiting for the mist to clear up.

"Yes, Cousin Eustace," said Primrose, who was a bright girl of twelve,
with laughing eyes, and a nose that turned up a little, "the morning
is certainly the best time for the stories with which you so often
tire out our patience. We shall be in less danger of hurting your
feelings, by falling asleep at the most interesting points,--as little
Cowslip and I did last night!"

"Naughty Primrose," cried Cowslip, a child of six years old; "I did
not fall asleep, and I only shut my eyes, so as to see a picture of
what Cousin Eustace was telling about. His stories are good to hear at
night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the
morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. So I hope he
will tell us one this very minute."

"Thank you, my little Cowslip," said Eustace; "certainly you shall
have the best story I can think of, if it were only for defending me
so well from that naughty Primrose. But, children, I have already told
you so many fairy tales, that I doubt whether there is a single one
which you have not heard at least twice over. I am afraid you will
fall asleep in reality, if I repeat any of them again."

"No, no, no!" cried Blue Eye, Periwinkle, Plantain, and half a dozen
others. "We like a story all the better for having heard it two or
three times before."

And it is a truth, as regards children, that a story seems often to
deepen its mark in their interest, not merely by two or three, but by
numberless repetitions. But Eustace Bright, in the exuberance of his
resources, scorned to avail himself of an advantage which an older
story-teller would have been glad to grasp at.

"It would be a great pity," said he, "if a man of my learning (to say
nothing of original fancy) could not find a new story every day, year
in and year out, for children such as you. I will tell you one of the
nursery tales that were made for the amusement of our great old
grandmother, the Earth, when she was a child in frock and pinafore.
There are a hundred such; and it is a wonder to me that they have not
long ago been put into picture-books for little girls and boys. But,
instead of that, old gray-bearded grandsires pore over them in musty
volumes of Greek, and puzzle themselves with tryi