Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/172

 sleep. Marnie never knew how it happened, but, as she sat looking at the Swiss cottage, she suddenly heard a rustling inside, and saw something pass before the open windows. She thought the chrysalis she had put in there had come to life, and waited, hoping to see a pretty butterfly pop its head out. But what a start she gave when suddenly the little door opened and a wee man came marching out. Yes, actually a living tiny man, dressed like a hunter, in green from top to toe, with a silver horn slung over his shoulder and a bow in his hand.

Marnie held her breath lest she should blow him away, and peeped with all her eyes from behind the hemlock-boughs, wondering what would happen next. Up the steps ran the little man to the balcony that always hangs outside a Swiss châlet, and lifting his horn to his lips blew a blast so soft and clear it sounded like the faint, far-off carol of a bird. Three times the fairy bugle sounded, and at the third blast, swarming up from the moss below, dropping from the ferns above, floating on the ripples of the mimic lake, and turning somersaults over the mushrooms, came hundreds of lovely little creatures,