“THERE are no fairies, did you say? Why, whatever are we coming to?” said Uncle James.

“But I’ve never seen one,” said Harry.

“I daresay not, but what do you suppose makes your ball bounce? Why, the fairy inside it, to be sure.”

Harry laughed at the time, but afterwards he couldn’t help thinking about it. Did fairies really live in india-rubber balls? If not, what made them bounce?

He thought and he thought and he thought—and at last he took out the new brown-handled knife Uncle James had given him, and he cut a hole in his india-rubber ball.

“Now I shall know!” he said. And he looked inside—but he was no wiser than before. But that night when he was in bed he saw a little lady, with gray gauze wings, sitting on his pillow.

“Thank you so much,” she said, “for letting me out. A wicked enchanter shut me and my million brothers up in balls, and when we struggle to get out, the balls bounce.”

Then she vanished. Next morning Harry thought he had only dreamed about her, so he ran to his ball; but there was the hole he had made, and sure enough the ball never bounced again.

“Because there is no fairy in it,” Uncle James says.

E. Nesbit.