FAIRIES are all pretty, we know, but the Twelfth Night Fairy was really lovely. She wore a white frock and a wreath of pink roses. She had no shoes or stockings, and stood on the tip of one toe and waved the other foot in the air. Teddy thought she was lovely, and he felt hungry when he looked at her, although he had just eaten his supper of bread-and-butter and milk. How he wished he were grown up instead of being only five years old, so that he had to be sent to bed like a baby, instead of sitting up for Mother’s party!

“I could eat her every bit; she’s only sugar,” said Teddy regretfully.

“Never mind, old man,” said Mother; “you shall have a nice slice of the cake to-morrow.” So Teddy sighed deeply, mounted the nursery stairs, and was soon far away in Dreamland.

But the Fairy went to Dreamland too. Teddy met her as soon as he crossed the threshold, and she told him she had been running after him ever since he left the supper-room.

“I wanted to tell you that I’m not sugar,” she said. “I’m a real live Fairy. And, oh! please, please don’t eat me! I heard your Mother say that she would give me to you, because you had been a good boy and went to bed without making a fuss.”

There were tears in the Fairy’s eyes, and she looked so piteously at Teddy that he felt inclined to cry too.

“I won’t eat you, dear little thing!” he said, kissing her. “If Mother gives you to me, I’ll keep you for ever and ever. But, oh dear! suppose someone else should eat you before morning?”

This was a dreadful idea, and the Fairy began to sob outright, so tender-hearted little Ted thought he would go at once and make his Mother promise that she would not let anyone touch the poor little pink-and-white Fairy.

It was not very far from Dreamland to the dining-room, and the little boy soon stood by his Mother’s side, with the bright light from the waxen candles shining upon his golden curls and lighting up his pretty blue eyes. The room was quite full of people, but Teddy, who was a shy boy generally, didn’t mind a bit. “Oh! Mother dear,” he cried earnestly, “promise that no one shall eat the little Fairy.”

Mother picked him up and kissed him, and then someone put the Fairy—who had followed him downstairs—into his hand, and in a moment he was fast asleep.

When he awoke in the morning the first thing he saw was his little friend, smiling at him from the top of the Nursery chest-of-drawers.

Teddy was so glad she was safe and sound, and he wouldn’t have eaten her for the world now, because, although she looked so sweet, he knew she was not made of sugar.

He grew very fond of her and carried on long one-sided conversations with her. She never answered him during the day, but at night she met him very often in Dreamland, and danced with him, and sang him the sweetest, quaintest songs, and Teddy says, when he’s a grown man, he’s going to marry the pink-and-white Fairy.

L. L. Weedon.