a little more pleasure and advantage from those interruptions, bringing out more information, and making it a little more lively in their hearing each other's voices, and having their sympathies expressed, she thought the best way would be to add the six marks of all the fairies in general to the four of the queen, making ten, and score these against the ten of Vial's, which was the largest number of any single one, and in this manner let them all be quits! The queen, after a moment's thought, assented to this, with evident pleasure sparkling on her countenance; for her laws were not like those of the Medes and Persians, that never could be changed.

When, by the queen's permission, this was announced to the band of fairies by the benevolent mediating fairy who had suggested it, such shouts of applause and ringings of delight were set up by the whole troop as showed how happy they were to be released.

But, that we may have some idea of the very great labor and toil they might have been obliged

to go through had the penalties been awarded,

as did once the Culprit Fay, who was sentenced to go up and get a ray from the moon, we will give an account in another chapter of an occasion when they had some extremely hard work to do; and it seemed for a time as if they would not be able to accomplish it, fairies though they were. These were not altogether the maids of honor who surrounded the queen during the week of the story-telling, but some others of the fairies also who were employed on this occasion, as will be seen in the story which follows.

CHAPTER X.

THE FAIRY QUEEN'S WARDROBE.

ONE season, when the long summer-holidays were over, in which the fairies had lived mostly for their own diversion or in idleness, the queen summoned them, and said they must now prepare for her a new wardrobe. Some were to make the linen for the under-garments; others were to make a sort of silken tissue for the dress; another, the stockings; and so on.

The fairies who were to make the linen scampered about over hill and dale to gather the thistle-down from which it was to be manufactured. For the silken tissue, armfuls of the silky pods of the silk-weed were brought; and for the stockings was collected that gossamer-like stuff which

floats among the bushes in the autumn-days. But all this was but a small part of the labor. The great work was to begin after the materials had all been accumulated and laid together in their various piles, or heaps.

Then it was amusing to see the linen-weavers spread out their bales of thistle-down upon the grass; and in order to break it, and card it into a smooth mat, two fairies seized upon a huge chestnut-burr; and, that they might not get pierced through and through with its sharp prickles, they each took a slender pole proportioned to their size, and with it turned the burr over and over, rolling it back and forth upon the downy stuff until it was all broken, softened, and smoothed as completely as if it had been done in a much better cardingmachine. For the pulling of it out into threads they did this curiously. A whole row of elves stood on one side of the thistle-down mat, or stuff, after it had been thus carded out, and which had been fastened to the ground on the opposite edge; and then each little elf stooped and took in her

fingers a bit of the down, and drew it very carefully, moving slowly backwards; at the same time using both her hands, smoothing and twisting the down as she pulled it into a delicate thread; just as men near the Pincio in Rome pull out the tow to make ropes where they have no machinery.*

After these fine threads were drawn out, in order to give them a finishing twist, they got some morning-glory flowers (of which the large end is

* This was the actual mode in which rope-making was carried on in Rome, at a “rope-walk,” as it might be called, formed simply of the trees and foot-walk on the side of the street: this we daily witnessed at some seasons in our walks to the Pincio. The tow was fastened to a tree; and the men took hold of it with their fingers, pulling it slowly out, walking backwards. The different threads thus made were twisted by hand into strands, and these again into ropes; the two ends being fastened from tree to tree, and the line being kept straight by two or three simple supports, as might be necessary. As handsome ropes, and of the various sizes, seemed to be made, as are manufactured in any other !

manner.

The story above was written during the stay in Florence, after the summer that Nannine and Gianina spent with their family at the Baths of Lucca.-See the companion-volume.