The Counterpane Fairy [12]
"Oh, I know what we'll do!" cried Silverling; "we'll give it to this little boy, because if it hadn't been for him we wouldn't have found each other."
"Oh, yes!" said Starlein.
But Teddy held up his hand--"Hush!" he whispered; "don't you hear it?"
Then they all listened, and sweeter and clearer than ever before they heard the voice of the singing fountain in the beautiful garden.
"It is the fountain!" cried Starlein and Silverling, half fearfully.
They each caught Teddy by the hand, and all ran down the hall together, and the very first corner that they turned they found themselves at the door of the garden.
The wind was blowing the lilies, the fruit on the wonderful trees shone and glistened in the sunlight, and the fountain--ah! the fountain was no longer singing, for the music-box in the nursery had run down.
Teddy looked about him. Instead of the garden there was the flowery India-room. The clock ticked, the fire crackled;--he was back in bed once more, and he heard mamma speaking to Hannah in the hall outside, so he knew she was home again.
"And that is the end of that story," said the Fairy of the Counterpane.
CHAPTER FOURTH.
THE MAGIC CIRCUS.
TEDDY was still in bed, though the doctor had said that very soon he might have the big chair wheeled up to the window and sit there awhile. Now he was propped up against the pillows playing with the paper circus his mother had brought to him the day before.
His little cousin Harriett had come in yesterday to spend the afternoon with him, and together they had cut out the figures--the clown, the ring-master, the pretty lady on the white horse, the acrobat on his coal-black steed, and all the rest.
This morning he had put some large books under the bedquilt, and smoothed it over them so as to make a flat plane, and was amusing himself setting the circus out, and arranging his soldiers in a long procession as if they were the audience coming to see it.
He seemed so well entertained that his mother said she would go over to the sewing-room for a little while to run up some seams on the machine.
When Teddy was left alone he still went on playing very happily, but as he set out the soldiers two by two, he was really thinking of the Counterpane Fairy and her wonderful stories.
The evening before he had fallen asleep while his mother was reading something to his father (for they both sat in Teddy's room in the evenings now that he was ill), and when he woke they were talking together about him. They did not see that his eyes were open, so they went on with what they were saying. It was his mother who was speaking. "He's such an odd child," she was saying; "just now he is full of this idea of the Counterpane Fairy and her stories, and he talks of her just as though she were real. I don't know where he got the idea. It isn't in any of his book and I thought you must have been telling him about it."
"No," said papa, "I didn't tell him."
"Perhaps it was Harriett," said mamma, and then she saw that he was awake and began to speak of something else.
Teddy wished his mother could see the Counterpane Fairy herself, and then she would know that it was a real fairy and not a make-believe. When he saw the Counterpane Fairy again he was going to ask her if he mightn't take his mother into one of the stories with him.
He was thinking of her so hard that it did not surprise him at all to hear her little thin voice just back of the counterpane hill. "Oh dear, dear! and the worst of it is that I hardly get to the top before I have to come down again."
"Is that you, Counterpane Fairy?" called Teddy.
"Yes it is," said the fairy. "I'll be there in a minute"; and soon she appeared above the top of the hill, and seated herself on it to rest, and catch her breath. "Dear, dear!" she said, "but it's a steep hill."
"Mrs. Fairy," said Teddy, "I want to ask you something. You know my mother?"
"Yes," said the Counterpane Fairy, "I know who she is."
"Well," said Teddy, "she's just gone over into the sewing-room, and I want to know