“Are you good fairies who have strayed away from home?” inquired Tania, calmly gazing first at Madge and then at Eleanor. She was perfectly self-possessed and asked her question as though it were the most natural one in the world.

The two girls stared hard at the child. Was her mind affected, or was she playing a game with them? Tania seemed not in the least disturbed. “Do go away now,” she urged. “I am all right, but something may happen to you.”

“You odd little thing!” laughed Madge. “We are not fairies. We are girls and we are lost. We are on our way to visit a friend, Mrs. Curtis, who lives on Seventieth Street near Fifth Avenue. She will be dreadfully worried about us if we don’t hurry on. But what can we do for you? We can’t take you with us, yet you must not go back to that wicked woman.”

“Oh, yes, I must,” returned Tania cheerfully. “I am not afraid of her. When the time comes I shall go away.”

“But who will take care of you, baby?” asked Eleanor. “Fairies don’t live in big cities like New York. They live only in beautiful green woods and fields.”

The black head nodded wisely. “Good fairies are everywhere,” she declared. “But I can make handfuls of pennies when I like,” she continued boastfully. “Let me show you how you must go on your way.”

“You can’t possibly know, little girl,” replied Madge gently. “It is so far from here.”

However, it was Tania who finally saw the two lost houseboat girls on board the elevated train that would take them to within a few blocks of their destination. Tania explained that she knew almost all of New York, and particularly she liked to wander up and down Fifth Avenue to gaze at the beautiful palaces. She was not young, she was really dreadfully old—almost thirteen!

The last look Madge and Eleanor had of Tania the child had apparently forgotten all about them. She was gazing up in the air, above all the traffic and roar of New York, with a happy smile on her elfish face.

“My dear children, I wouldn’t have had it happen for worlds!” was Mrs. Curtis’s first greeting as she came out from behind the rose-colored curtains of her drawing room. “Tom has been telephoning me frantically for the past hour. How did he and the girls miss you? You poor dears, you must be nearly tired to death after your unpleasant experience.”

While Mrs. Curtis was talking she was leading her visitors up a beautiful carved oak staircase to the floor above. Her house was so handsomely furnished that Madge and Eleanor were startled at its luxurious appointments.

Mrs. Curtis brought her guests into a large sleeping room which opened into another bedroom which was for the use of Phil and Lillian.

Madeleine was to be married the next afternoon at four o ’clock. The girls had not brought their bridesmaids’ dresses along with them, as Mrs. Curtis had asked to be allowed to present them with their gowns.

It was all that Madge could do not to beg Mrs. Curtis to show them their frocks. She hoped that their hostess would offer to do so, but during the rest of the day their time was occupied in seeing Madeleine, her hundreds of beautiful wedding gifts, meeting Judge Hilliard all over again, and being introduced to Mrs. Curtis’s other guests. The four girls went to bed at midnight, thinking of their bridesmaids’ gowns, but without having had the chance even to inquire about them.

Mrs. Curtis belonged to the old and infinitely more aristocratic portion of New York society. She did not belong to the new smart set, which numbers nearer four thousand, and does so much to make society ridiculous. Madeleine had asked that she might be married very quietly. She had never become used to the gay world of fashion after her strange and unhappy youth. It made the girls and their teacher smile to see what Mrs. Curtis considered a quiet wedding.

Miss Jenny Ann and her four charges had their coffee and rolls in Madge’s room the next morning at about nine o’clock. Madge peeped out of the doorway, there were so many odd noises in the hall. The upstairs hall was a mass of beautiful evergreens. Men were hanging garlands of smilax on the balusters. The house was heavy with the scent of American Beauty roses. But there was no sign of Mrs. Curtis or of Madeleine or Tom, and still no mention of the bridesmaids’ costumes for the girls.

Lillian Seldon was looking extremely forlorn. “Suppose Mrs. Curtis has forgotten our frocks!” she suggested tragically, as Madge came back with her report of the house’s decorations. “She has had such an awful lot to attend to that she may not have remembered that she offered to give us our frocks. Won’t it be dreadful if Madeleine has to be married without our being bridesmaids after all?”

“O Lillian! what a dreadful idea!” exclaimed Eleanor.

Even Phyllis looked sober and Miss Jenny Ann looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

“O, you geese! cheer up!” laughed Madge. “I know Mrs. Curtis would not disappoint us for worlds. Why, she has all our measures. She couldn’t forget. Oh, dear, does my breakfast gown look all right? There is some one knocking at our door. It may be that Mrs. Curtis has sent up our frocks.”

“Then open the door, for goodness’ sake,” begged Eleanor. “Your breakfast gown is lovely; only at home we called it a wrapper, but then you were not visiting on Fifth Avenue.”

Madge made a saucy little face at Eleanor. Then she saw a group of persons standing just outside their bedroom door. A man-servant held four enormous white boxes in his arms; a maid was almost obscured by four other boxes equally large. Behind her servants stood Mrs. Curtis, smiling radiantly, while Tom was peeping over his mother’s shoulder.

Madge clasped her hands fervently, breathing a quick sigh of relief. “Our bridesmaids’ dresses! I’m too delighted for words.”

“Were you thinking about them, dear?” apologized Mrs. Curtis. “I ought to have sent the frocks to you sooner, but I wanted to bring them myself, and this is the first moment I have had. You’ll let Tom come in to see them, too, won’t you?”

The man-servant departed, but Mrs. Curtis kept the maid to help her lift out the gowns from the billows of white tissue paper that enfolded them. She lifted out one dress, Miss Jenny Ann another, and the maid the other two.

The girls were speechless with pleasure.

Mrs. Curtis, however, was disappointed. Perhaps the girls did not like the costumes. She had used her own taste without consulting them. Then she glanced at the little group and was reassured by their radiant faces.

“O you wonderful fairy godmother!” exclaimed Madge. “Cinderella’s dress at the ball couldn’t have been half so lovely!”

Madeleine’s wedding was to be in white and green. The bridesmaids’ frocks were of the palest green silk, covered with clouds of white chiffon. About the bottom of the skirts were bands of pale green satin and the chiffon was caught here and there with embroidered wreaths of lilies of the valley. The hats were of white chip, ornamented with white and pale green plumes.

It was small wonder that four young girls, three of them poor, should have been awestruck at the thought of appearing in such gowns.

“I shall save mine for my own wedding dress!” exclaimed Eleanor.

“I shall make my dÉbut in mine,” insisted Lillian.

“We can’t thank you enough,” declared Phyllis, a little overcome by so much grandeur.

Tom was standing in a far corner of the room.

“I would like to suggest that I be allowed to come into this,” he demanded firmly.

“You, Tom?” teased Madge. “You’re merely the audience.”

Tom took four small square boxes out of his pocket. “Don’t you be too sure, Miss Madge Morton. My future brother-in-law, Judge Robert Hilliard, has commissioned me to present his gifts to his bridesmaids. Madge shall be the last person to see in these boxes, just for her unkind treatment of me.”

“All right, Tom,” agreed Madge; “I don’t think I could stand anything more just at this instant.”

Nevertheless Madge peeped over Phil’s shoulder. Judge Hilliard had presented each one of the houseboat girls with an exquisite little pin, an enameled model of their houseboat, done in white and blue, the colors of the “Merry Maid.”

The wedding was over. There were still a few guests in the dining room saying good-bye to Mrs. Curtis and Tom; but Madeleine and Judge Hilliard had gone. The four girls and Miss Jenny Ann found a resting place in the beautiful French music room.

Madeleine’s wedding presents were in the library, just behind the music room.

“It was simply perfect, wasn’t it, Miss Jenny Ann?” breathed Lillian, as they drew their chairs together for a talk.

“Madeleine must be perfectly happy,” sighed Eleanor sentimentally. “Judge Hilliard is so good-looking.”

“Oh, dear me!” broke in Madge, coming out of a brown study. She was sitting in a big carved French chair. “I don’t see how Madeleine Curtis could have left her mother and this beautiful home for any man in the world. I am sure if I had such an own mother I should never leave her,” finished the little captain.

“Until some one came along whom you loved better,” interposed Miss Jenny Ann.

“That could never be, Miss Jenny Ann,” declared Madge stoutly, her blue eyes wistful. “Why, if my father is alive and I find him, I shall never leave him for anybody else.”

“What’s that noise?” demanded Phyllis sharply.

It was after six o’clock and the Curtis home was brilliantly lighted. The window blinds were all closed. But there was a curious rapping and scratching at one of the windows that opened into a small side yard.

“It may be one of the servants,” suggested Miss Jenny Ann, listening intently.

“It can’t be,” rejoined Madge. “No one of them would make such a strange noise.”

“I think I had better call Tom,” breathed Eleanor faintly. “It must be a burglar trying to steal Madeleine’s wedding gifts.”

Madge shook her head. “Wait, please,” she whispered. She ran to the window. There was the faint scratching noise again! Madge lifted the shade quickly. Perched on the window sill was the oddest figure that ever stepped out of the pages of a fairy book. It was impossible to see just what it was, yet it looked like a little girl. One hand clung to the window facing, a small nose pressed against the pane.

“Why, it’s a child!” exclaimed Miss Jenny Ann in tones of relief. “Open the window and let her come in.”

Madge flung open the window. Light as a thistledown, the unexpected little visitor landed in the center of the room.

Madge and Eleanor had completely forgotten the elfin child they had met in the slums of New York City; but now she appeared among them just as mysteriously as though she were the fairy she pretended to be.

She wore a small red coat that was half a dozen sizes too tiny for her. Her skirt was patched with odds and ends of bright flowered materials. On her head perched a cap, a scarlet flower, cut from an odd scrap of old wall paper. In her hands Tania clasped a ridiculous bundle, done up in a dirty handkerchief.

“You strange little witch!” exclaimed Madge. “However did you find your way here? Be very still and good until the lovely lady who owns this house sees you, then I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she gave you some cake and ice cream before she sends you away.”

Tania sat down in the corner still as a mouse. Her thin knees were hunched close together. She held her poor bundle tightly. Her big black eyes grew larger and darker with wonder as she had her first glimpse of a fairyland, outside her own imagination, in the beautiful room and the group of lovely girls who occupied it.

Mrs. Curtis came in a minute later, followed by a man who had been one of the guests at the wedding. Madge, Eleanor, and Tania recognized him instantly. He was the young man who had protected Tania from the blows of the brutal woman the afternoon before, but Tania did not seem pleased to see him. Her face flushed hotly, her lips quivered, though she made no sound.

Mrs. Curtis smiled quizzically. Madge could see that there were tears behind her smiles. “Who is our latest guest, Madge?” she asked, gazing kindly at the odd little person.

Tania rose gravely from her place on the floor. “I am a fairy who has been under the spell of a wicked witch,” she asserted with solemnity, “but now the spell is broken and I’ve run away from her. I shan’t go back ever any more.”

Mrs. Curtis’s young man guest took the child firmly by the shoulders.

“What do you mean by coming here to trouble these young ladies?” he demanded sternly. “I thought I recognized your friends, Mrs. Curtis. They saved this child yesterday from a punishment she probably well deserved. She is one of the children in our slum neighborhood that we have not been able to reach. I will take her back to her home with me at once.”

The child’s head was high in the air. She caught her breath. Her eyes had a queer, eerie look in them. “You can’t take me back now,” she insisted. “The spell is broken. I shall never see old Sal again.”

Madge put her arm about the small witch girl. “Let her stay here just to-night, Mrs. Curtis, please,” begged Madge earnestly. “I wish to find out something about her. I will look after her and see that she does not do any harm.”

Quite seriously and gently Tania knelt on one knee and kissed Mrs. Curtis’s hand. “Let me stay. I shall be on my way again in the morning,” she pleaded, “but I am a little afraid of the night.”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Curtis, gently drawing the waif to her side, “you are far too little to be running away from home. You may stay here to-night, then to-morrow we will see what we can do for you. I won’t trouble you with her to-night, Philip,” she added, turning to her guest.

“It will be no trouble,” returned Philip Holt blandly. “She lives less than an hour’s ride from here. Her foster mother will be greatly worried at her absence.”

Mrs. Curtis looked hesitatingly at Tania, who had been listening with alert ears. The child’s black eyes took on a look of lively terror. “Please, please let me stay,” she begged, clasping her thin little hands in anxious appeal.

“Won’t you let Tania stay here to-night, Mrs. Curtis?” asked Madge for the second time. “I am sorry to disagree with Mr. Holt, but I do not believe that poor little Tania is either lawless or incorrigible. The woman who claims her is the most cruel, brutal-looking person I ever saw. I am sure she is not Tania’s mother. Let me keep her here to-night, and to-morrow I will inquire into her case.”

“Very well, Madge,” said Mrs. Curtis reluctantly. She glanced toward Philip Holt. His eyes, however, were fixed upon Madge with an expression of disapproval and dislike. For the first time it occurred to Mrs. Curtis that Philip Holt might be very disagreeable if thwarted. She immediately dismissed the thought as unworthy when the young man said smoothly: “I shall be only too glad to have Miss Morton investigate the child’s record. I am sorry that my word has not been sufficient to convince her.”

Madge made no reply to this thrust. Then an awkward silence ensued. Mrs. Curtis looked annoyed, Tania triumphant, Madge belligerent, and the other girls sympathetic. Making a strong effort, Philip Holt controlled his anger and, extending his hand to Mrs. Curtis, said: “Pray, pardon my interference. I was prompted to speak merely in your interest. I trust I shall see you again in the near future. Good night.” He bowed coldly to the young women and took his departure.

“What a disagreeable——” Madge stopped abruptly. Her face flushed. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Curtis,” she said contritely. “I shouldn’t have spoken my mind aloud.”

“I forgive you, my dear,” there was a slight tone of constraint in Mrs. Curtis’s voice, “but I am sure if you knew Mr. Holt as I do you would have an entirely different opinion of him.”

“Perhaps I should,” returned Madge politely, but in her heart she knew that she and Philip Holt were destined not to be friends, but bitter enemies.