PERIWINKLE PAINTBRUSHES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 17

PERIWINKLE PAINTBRUSHES

Daffy was one of the fairy flower painters, and one line spring day the Fairy Queen sent him to paint the periwinkles in the Fairy Wood. He flew away at once with his bucket of lovely blue paint and tiny fairy paintbrushes, and was soon busy at his pleasant task. He did not notice, though, as he painted away and whistled a blithe little tune, that three naughty woodsprites were watchnig him from behind a tree. These naughty little people were intent on mischief, as anyone could have told from their faces. They came creeping up behind Daffy just as he took a clean brush in his hand and bent over a periwinkle flower, ready to paint it, and suddenly they gave him a push. “Oh-oh!” cried Daffy, as he fell forward, spilling all his blue paint on the ground (some of it went on the wood-sprites, which served them right), and dropping his brush right into the long tube-like throat of a periwinkle. The wood-sprites shrieked with laughter as Daffy sat up and looked bewilderedly round, and then they ran away among the trees, for they saw the Fairy Queen coming through the forest with her attendants. She had come to see how Daffy was working. “So those wood-sprites have been at their tricks again,” she said as she j looked at the pool of blue paint. “Oh, well, wood-sprites will be wood-sprites, I suppose! They’re really good-hearted little people, for all their mischief.” “Yes, your Majesty,” said Daffy, scrambling to his feet and .trying to take the paint-brush out of the periwinkle’s throat. “Oh," cried the Queen, when she saw what he was doing, “let that stay there, Daffy! It gives me an idea. I think we’ll have little paint-brushes iu all the periwinkles—they’ll do for the pollen to go on, instead of stamens.*’’ So the fairies gathered ever so many little paint-brushes and put them in the periwinkles; if you were to pull a periwinkle flower to . pieces to-day you'd still find a tiny fairy paint-brush in the long, narrow throat—Original, by “‘Excelsior Elf,” aged 10. Hawera.