THE FAIRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 46, 23 February 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE FAIRY.

(By P. J. Koycroft, Klmberly Rond, Waihl.)

I have ridden many times into this glen, and slowly up among the beeches and oaks into the lanes again, hoping and believing that some day I should _ see a fairy take shape to my mortal vision; and to-day, at last, I have seen.

I heard it first about half-way up the wood, a silvery voice piping out what seemed like mortal words, not quite to be caught. Resolved not to miss it this time, I got off quietly and tied my mare to a tree. Then, tiptoeing in the damp leaves, which did not rustle, I stole up till I caught sight of it from behind an oak.

It was sitting in yellow bracken as| high as its head, under a birch tree, which had a few branches still gold feathered. It seemed to be clothed in blue, and to be swaying as it sang. There was something in its arms, as it might be a creature being nursed. Cautiously I slipped from that tree to the next, till I could see its face, just like a child's, fascinating, very, very delicate, the little open mouth poised and shaped ever so neatly to the words it was singing; the eye 3 wide apart g.nd ever so wide open, fixed on nothing mortal. The song, and the little body, and the spirit in the eyes, all seemed to sway—sway together, like a soft wind that goes "sough-sough," swinging, in the tops of the ferns. And now it stretched out on© arm and now the other beckoning in to it those to which it was singing, so that one seemed 1# feel the invisible ones stealing up closer and closer.

These were the words which cam© so silvery and slow through that little mouth: "Chil—dren, chil—cLren 1 Hus— sh!*

It seemed as if the very rabbits must com© and sit up there, the jays and pigeons settle above, everything in all the wood gather. Even one's own heart seemed to be drawn in by those beckoning arms, the slow enchantment of that tinkling voice, and the look in those eyes which, lost in the unknown, were seeing no mortal glen, but only that mazed wood, where friendly wild things come, who have no sound to their padding, no whirr to the movement of their wings; whose gay whisperings hav© no noise, whose eager ishapes no colour —the fairy dream-wood unimaginable. "Chil—dren, chil—dren! Hus-sh!" For just a moment. I could see that spirit company—ghosts of the ferns and leaves, of butterflies and bees, and four-footed things innumerable, and tiny flickering ghosts of moonrays. And then I trod on a dead branch, and all vanished. My fairy was gone, and there was only little "Connemara" nursing her doll and smiling up at me from the fern, where she had coma to practise her new school song.