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 “This is where the bad wood elves dwell,” whispered Anne. “They are impish and malicious but they can’t harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn’t you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places.”

“I wish there really were fairies,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have three wishes granted you or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I’d wish to be rich and beautiful and clever.”

“I’d wish to be tall and slender,” said Diana.

“I would wish to be famous,” said Priscilla.

Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.

“I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all our lives,” she said.

“But that,” said Priscilla, “would be just wishing this world were like heaven.”

“Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don’t you, Jane?”

“I I don’t know,” said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she Rh