THE WENDY HUT.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 June 1926, Page 21

THE WENDY HUT.

FROM WENDY’S ARMCHAIR. Children Dear, —You know the Wendy Woods at the back of the Wendy Hut, don’t you? Perhaps you’ve never actually seen them, but you’ve heard all about them, and the wonderful things ' that are in them. The other day I was wandering in the Wendy Woods all alone. I was thinking about my Wendy Ladies and Billy Boys as I walked, and trying not to step on the pretty tiny wildflowers that spread over the mossy path. I must have been in the Wendy M oods for quite a long time for suddenly I felt very, very tired. Finding a little mossy mound under a tall tree, I sat down to rest. The dearest wee Elf-man appeared at my elbow. He was dressed from little pointed boots to little pointed cap all in green. He had chubby pink cheeks, and bright blue eyes, and the loveliest brown curly hair you ever saw. He pulled off his green pointed cap, and touched my elbow gently. “If the Wendy Lady would kindly get up for a moment,” he said, “I could do my work here, and worry her no more!” “Do your work here!” “Yes, my work! Uncurling the Bracken, you know!” I looked around. Sure enough, the little delicate fronds of bracken fern were uncurling. Some had uncurled altogether, and stood, like sentinel ferns, waiting for their brothers and sisters to join them and help make one of the wonders of the Wendy Woods —the Bracken! I moved, and the little Elf-man carefully uneurled one delicate frond after not her, took off his green pointed cap again, and vanished! Down the same path eame another wee man. He was dressed all in brown, from the tips of his pointed little boots to the tip of his pointed little hat; in his hand he carried a brown basket. “If the Wendy lady would oblige,” he began. But already I had jumped up. Down on his knees went the wee Gnome-man, searching here and there and everywhere, and gathering up nutshells! “The Squirrels,” he remarked, "are rather careless! They drop the shells of their nuts in the woods sometimes, and they look untidy. It is my business to clear them up.” He took off his little brown cap, and vanished after the green Elf-man. “This,” I thought, “must really be Tink’s very own Fairyland, right here in the Wendy Woods.” “It is, Wendy Lady, it is,” a thousand tiny voices answered. “If only Humans would try to see —Fairyland is always in the Woods, and Elves and Gnomes are always working there. But Humans are blind, so very, very blind!” ‘T must tell my Wendy children to go into the Woods and see,” I thought. “They mustn’t be blind.” The little green Elf-man came back to uncurl a forgotten frond of bracken ust aS I woke up.