  “Dear me, it’s so lovely outdoors,” sighed Margaret, one day in May. She had torn her new dress on a nail when she was climbing over a fence. “Mother says it was very careless of me and I s’pose I can’t go out again until it’s mended!” She looked very unhappy indeed as she said this. “You can mend it outdoors,” said her little Fairy friend peeping out of the work-basket. “Sit out in the garden under the trees. We’d just love to get out in the sunshine,” he finished wistfully. “Oh! you dear little things!” cried Margaret. “How dull for you to be shut up in this stuffy work-basket all the time and never get a peep outside. I’ll take you out now as soon as I change my new dress for my old one.” When they were in the garden Margaret looked at the damage the nail had done to her dress. There was an ugly, three-cornered tear. The King called Runner to help with the task of making the torn place look like new. With thread the same color as the dress for harness, Runner was soon ready to begin. Sir Bodkin sat on a tiny green vine to direct the work. Margaret took the dress in her left hand, wrong “O’er left forefinger hold the tear, And with the right hand mend. Across and back take running steps, Beginning at one end. Draw edges close, but not too tight, Take short runs round the turn. To other end run smoothly on, ’Tis not so hard to learn!” The birds were singing Mending tear While they were working, the birds were singing and the sweet smell of the flowers entranced them. When the ugly tear was mended and the dress made nearly as good as new again, Margaret sighed with relief. “Time was long ago in your great-grandmother’s day, young ladies used to tear their muslin dresses purposely to show how prettily they could mend,” Sir Bodkin told Margaret. “They did?” she cried in surprise. “How funny!” “Now to make it look flat, give this mended tear a dose of warm iron on the wrong side,” Sir Bodkin advised. “Thank you, Your Highness. What “We can’t help it. We’re Fairies! ’Sides I’m a King,” he said proudly, “and ought to be different from the rest.” The fresh air and sunshine were making him feel very fine indeed. Some girls and boys called to Margaret just then from a neighbor’s garden and she ran hastily away to join them. Sir Bodkin and the other Needle Fairies slipped down into the green grass for a frolic. “How nicely she mended her dress!” she said. “I’ll take it in for her,” and gathered it and the work-basket in her arms and carried them all into the house. The little Fairies were frightened to see their house taken away. Together they huddled around the garden seat wondering how in the world they would get back again into the big house. “The dew will be very bad for us!” said the King in distress. Margaret came running back when she heard the supper gong. Her bright eyes, luckily, spied them in the grass. Stooping, she picked them up one by one and carried them into the house in Sir Bodkin was very much worried. He walked up and down and up and down the table-top. “I know we’ll be forgotten here and we may be lost on the floor!” he said over and over to himself. He heard his little mistress after supper go out in the kitchen to press her dress. “Oh! perhaps she’ll remember where she put us!” the poor little King kept saying to his subjects. Margaret came out of the kitchen and was about to go up-stairs when she remembered her little friends. Picking them up again in her hand she carried them this time safely up-stairs to her own room and stuck them in the tomato pincushion. “To-morrow I’ll give you all a nice emery bath,” she said to them. |
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