THE FAIR MAID OF FEBRUARY. (Specially written for the Witness L.F. By Mrs T. R. Seddon.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2651, 4 January 1905, Page 74

THE FAIR MAID OF FEBRUARY. (Specially written for the Witness L.F. By Mrs T. R. Seddon.)

"Here you are at last!" The words were spoken with a sigh of relief, and of astonishment. Tip sat cross-legged on the top of a stone. His red hat was cocked on one side, his green coat' and knee-breeches and stockings and his shoes with emerald buckles, were an shining in the sunlight, which after a long, cold winter, at last seemed-to have a little warmth in it. If 'you had happened to pass "by just then, and your eye had. fallen on that spot, you would only have seen what you would have imagined to be a stone, with a few leaves on it, which the winds had strewn there. You would never have noticed that small body, those tiny legs, or that queer little face resting its chin on his hand, and* alive with wonder and inquiry. Yet there he was. He sat, as I said, on the top of a stone ; it was a blue flint stone, and it made quite a nice tall seat for a little fellow of his size. He looked very solemn just then; he spoke almost with ' awe, 'certainly with wonder. ■' Here you are at last!" he said again. "I've sat on this stone — I told you I would mark your home with it — I've sat on this stone millions of times and watched for you. The snow came and the -frost, the ram poured down and the cold north wind swept over the hills, and down through the forest, and oven reached this snug little dingle and swept it all bare as a barren rock, and still I came and perched here and watched to see if your strange story could be true." "It is true," sa<id a soft, gentle voice, and the fairy of the snowdrop spread the daintiest little wings in the world and alighted in all her pure white beauty on the top of her stalk. '•Wonderful! Wonderful.'" exclaimed the little green man. "I thought I was very fine," he went on; "in fact, I have dtessed myself in my very test to come arid see you"; lout, somehow, though I was very pleased with myself when I set out, now that I see you I don't feel half so fine as I did." The poor little fellow looked quite depressed, and Fairywell hastened to say: "Why, I am sure you look quite beautiful ! " you think so?" he asked, and then, without waiting for a reply, for, indeed, he felt no reply was needed, he continued : "Let us have a ride on the sunbeams!" „ "Let us! Hurrah!" she cried. "Hurrah! hurrah" he cried, and taking her tiny hand they flew away together, away, away on a bright warm shaft of a sunbeam, danciug and s^hgmg in the golden light, riding hither and above the tree tops, above the grand old Elizabethan juall, above the HIL Farm, .above the cows and sheep in the paddocks, forgetful of -all except the delight of the moment's enjoyment. They loosened hands, and chased and raced after one another, they flew and dodged and stooped ana jumped, and then all in a moment they'gave a glanoe at one another, joined hands, and slid down the sunbeam faster than you can say "slid!" There they were at the bottom again. " It was a mercy you noticed!" said the wee green man, with a chuckle. " I was watching." she said. "I have learned to watch, you .see," she added. ' " I don't see," said the wee man. "I think it is' I who ought to say I have learned to watch, after watching for you, as I have been doing for months past. I haven't learned to watch for sunbeams going back to the sun When I am having a good time of it, if that is what you mean." Fairywell gave a delicious little laugh. "That's just what I do mean," she said. "That is what I have been learning to do down there under the earth." ''Down. under the horrible dark earth!" he exclaimed. ' " Down under the dear, warm, brown earth," she said. The sun had gone away from the dingle, journeying on to the west, and hastening to give his warm beams to the other ends of the ' earth. It was growing dark and chill, and the two little people felt the change. " Oh, Fairywell," said the little green man, "it is getting late and chill. anS I have never yet heard your wonderful story. You promised you would tell it, to me ; must I wait till tomorrow, or will you come with me to-night to the Brownies' Hall and git in my mossy bower and tell it to me" ? Surely, your white Home Bell will not droop if you are away for a single night?" " I promised, and I will keep my promise," she answered ; "and, Tip, I will come to-night, for I almost" think" that if we wait till to-mor-row I should not tell it to you 'at all. I think I may be gone from here by to-morrow." "Gone!" he cried, -"What nonsense! You have only just come ! You will be here a good long time, I can tell you." '" Come for me, then," she said, "when the moon rises above the trees, and we will travel to your mossy bank across her beams." Then she turned to her Home Bell and hid in her nest. The little green man sat down again on his flint stone. He cocked his red cap on one side -^he seemed able to think better when it was sideways — put his chin in his hand, and sat motionless for quite a long time. Then he thought he would tret his bower ready for his lady, and rattled off whistling a merry whistle as he sprang through the dingle and forest. The moon rose above the trees; Tip stood at the entrance to the Home Bell and whistled his brightest and gayest serenade. Fairywell stepped forth. She looked more beautiful and pure and lovely in the moonlight than even before. She gave hei hand to Tip. With a gay, glad laugh, the two sprang on to the nearest; moonbeam. Up they glided with smooth, lightsome tread, until by-and-bye they reached a grsnd old oak. Here they left tho moonbeam, and catching a small twig, ran along it to the trunk, and thence down the bark to the foot. "Oh I" cried Fairywell, in delight and surprise as she entered the mossy bower. "Oh!" she cried again. It was so beautiful she could say nothing else at first. " How lovely! How beautiful!" she said a fc

Tip led her to a tiny couch of the finest moss, and she looked round her. The carpet was golden moss, the roof was supported with pillars of silver birch, the walls were decorated with stars of mica, which sparkled and shone out from the interlaced twigs of oak and fir, the tables were the sweetest little red and yellow and white toadstools, just high enough for them to stand at comfortably. Against tha walls, carefully fastened into the side, were fairy forget-me-nots, each of which held a clear full drop of moonlight, that shed a soft, bright light on everything. At the further end of the bower a curtain of gauze, spun for Tip by the spiders, was partly drawn back, and allowed her to see a house garden, sucii as the Biownics delight in. Banks of moss were round the walls, from the tiniest fronds to the largest, which, indeed, were al- • most like forest trees to the little people — green, red, yellow, and all shades of brown. All the fairy wild flowers grew here in profusion, their blooms looking like, stars of earth ; in the centre a silvery fountain played which gathered scent from the flowers, and gave out s the most delicious perfume, and here and there glow-worms waited and lighted up the mossy soft paths. In this charming garden a repast just fit for a fairy was ready laid. " Come, my queen," said the gallant litt'e man as he led her to the place prepared for her, and .pledged her in a dainty cup with which the lichen had supplied him, filled with fairy dew. Little brownies, dressed all in yellow, waited upon them, and the orickets played and san^. Oh, it was lovely, lovely! all alone therein the mighty forest, far away from the haunts of men, and with nothing to make them anxious or fearful ! The bonny squirrel looked down from his cosy nest in the hollow of the fir tree at Hand as the gay sounds caught his watchful ears. "There's pleasant sport below I there," he sa.id. "The little people are having a happy timeJL" Fairy moths hung and fluttered above the ; bowers and fanned gentle breezes through the lattices. Fairy bettles hummed along their paths. After this they went and joined the other Brownies and danced in the Brownies' Hall till they could dance no more, and tnen Tip said: "Fairywell, tell me about the wonderful time you have spent under the earth. How you are still alive is more than I can guess. What went on under the earth?" " Oh, Tip," she answered, as an earnest look came ovex her calm face, "I hardly know how to tell you, for very often it was not easy to me to know what it all meant." "But tell me," he urged; -'try to tell me." 1 " When I became a seed," she sa*li, ''and fell off my mother's plant, I thought, like yem, I that perhaps I should never live again! I i^only thought and feared it, for there was a strange feeling within . me which made- me hope I should not quite die. There had been I a great deal of rain, and the dingle, was very wet, and as I lay on the ground hoping I should not sink into it, and be buried up, I heard the children from the Hall come along. They were looking to see if there* were any snowdrops left, and said they wanted some for 'poor, sick, old Mrs James, at the Farm.'- There were still a few on my mother's plant; they I ran to it with., the greatest joy, and as they picked them, one of the boys trod on me and ( buried me right down into the earth till I was quite covered up." < "How frightful!" exclaimed Tip. ' '" So I thought, then," said she ; " but I found I was warmer and drier and more comfortable in my little coat below than above ths ground, and I lay on and on and on down there in the dear darkness in perfect rest and calm. " " Do you mean that you did not want to get out?" asked Tip. "' No, I didn't," she answered. "I found I only wanted to lie there and wait for something that was coming. I did not know what that something was,- but all the same I wanted to wait on,, and all the time I feH qixite certain that I was coming back to life once more." t " That is very strange," said 'Tip. "Were you not impatient at waiting so long?" " I thought I should have been," she said ; "but it did not seem long, with all I had to do. ' "Why, you were doing nothing!" he cried. "' That was what I had to do, I found," she answered. "All the while there was something warm within, and I nursed it. By-and-bye the rain came through and the warmth of the sun, and then the rain again, and I cou.v. not tell /you how many changes there were. One day ,the shell seemed ready to break, but it was only to make place for the life to come forth. When first the child's foot crushed me down into the earth I feared I should never have the strength to push the earth off me and rise out of it, but when my two green shafts of tender leaves were ready, it seemed to move' aside to let them go up; it .was the earth that protected me all the time, that brought the mois' ture and the warmth, and kept ni-e safe, and made me grow up again. Day by day my bell grew, and I knew I was nearing the pure air, and at last I was tall enough to look once more down again on the old playground of the dingle, just as I had told you I hoped do. " It is wonderful," said Tip, looking afresh at the dainty creature. "It seems impossible that such a white, pure creature can have spent all this ,time in darkness, closely shut up p way from every sort of life ; pressed upo n by a weight of earth such as would undoubtedly kill me; with no friend to speak to, no bright songs, no gay dances; nothing but waiting, waiting, waiting, and for something which, after all. it was not quite certain was coming. It would have killed me!" "But it made me live,", said she. " Don't try it again," said he. "Give up the flower life, leave your Home Bell, stay with me, and be a. Brownie. We will live in this bower and feast and sing and play forever." " But, Tip," she said, "you will not be a Brownie any longer if you do like that. You Brownies are the 'good people' of the woods and forests; you have to make the country bright and beautiful, to clear the leaves away, to tidy up after the storms, to carry seeds to poor, lonely, forgotten places, to ptit moss on the stones, to do all sorls of pleasant tasks ; and I, Tip, I have my work too, which would miss me if I forsook it." "But what do you call your work?" he answered. "To be a flower fairy," she answered ; "sometimes to smg and dance and play with you; but first of all to live in my Home Bell and make the dingle fair, and perhaps, Tip, some day to do a greater thing than that." Then she told him how the children fron-> the Hall had already been in the dingle seeking snowdrops; how they had actually come and looked at her, and noticed that she was very nearly ready to gather- how they had said that their dear old Mrs . James, at the Farm, was longing for the sight of a snowdrop, and thought it would do her good if she could but hold one in her hand again before she "went awny." The children had said that she was going to have a white robs to wear sonre day, and that that was why- she liked to have the snowdrops near her to remind her of the beautiful diess that was waiting for her. ' The good gay little Brownie looked with wondering eyes at his beautiful lauy. He was the most cheerful and best-minded of small creatures ; but though he might at times be aWJ, hs dicl noji toP-w whajb it was to be

sorry. He ccmld not be angry with any one so pure and lovely as Fairywell, even though curiosity had brought him for months past to watch and see if she would be able to do as she hoped, and comic to life again out of her seed. He would have liked to have her for a Brownie, but since she wou'd not cease to be a flower fairy, and since she had so many strange ideas which, after all, he could not understand, he felt that she had better go her own way. " Come and have one more dance," he begged, and they went arid danced till the moon and the sun were near to greet one another. Then, almost on the last beams, they sailed away and bade each other a happy adieu at the entrance of Fairywell's Home Bell. The afternoon of the day that followed, two children came running through the dingle. "Oh," they shouted, "It's out! It's out!" And to Fairywell's joy — for Fairywell had learntd to know both joy and grief — they gathered her. "What a beauty it is!" said one. " Yes, and the very first. How good and dear of it to come!" The children hurried on to the Farm. " Mother, here are the little ladies from the Hall," said a gentle voice, as the two little girls entered. They ran forward softly, and the old woman held out her arms to hsr nurslings' children, for she -had been their mother's and their grandmother's nurse. She was a beautiful old woman, with a serioTra-calm face ; deep brown eyes looked forth from beneath a stronglylined forehead, while great- masses of snovvwhite hair stood out like "a glory round her head. * For a moment she hardly appeared tf> know the children; she looked inquiringly first at them and then at her daughter; but as they held out the white blossom to her, saying : "A snowdiop for you, dear old Janxesie, 1 ' a bright smile spread over her face and lishted it up with joy. She took the tiny gift "with' the utmost tenderness, and gazed on it as if at a great treasure. " It was always her favourite flower," half whispered the stalwart son who stoou behind her chair. \ But the old woman noticed no one. She still looked fixedly at the flower ; then, lifting her face upwards, she said : s " And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season. . . . they have washed their robes and made them white." She lay back on her pillow and closed -her eyes, as though in perfect rest. The snowdrop had given its message, and lay in her hand, and. while she slept the . bright Angel of Life came for her and carried her to the glad Land of the Blest. The bonnie green man came again to his seat on the flint stone, and sat with crossed legs and chin in hand, looking for Fairywell. S soon as he had satisfied himself that she was not there, he concluded, that she had got her wish and had gone to visit what he called "the human's." • " She'll never come-back," he said,, "never! None of our people do who go to visit the humans. What they do to them, I'm sure I aon't know, and why any of our sort of folk should want to go to their sort of folk is more than I can tell. I wonder now if si c had really been down in that hard, dark, ugly earthy all those months and months? It does not seem possible. Perhaps she only dreamed it." He sat still without moving for a Iciig, long time. Then he said: " But perhaps it is I who have dreamed it all."