Page:Fairies I have met.djvu/105



ITTLE Fairy Flitterwing had no home. Whenever he settled down in a place something happened to turn him out. If he found a comfortable rosebud some one would come and pick it, and then it died and he was homeless again. If he chose a pink-edged daisy to live in, the gardener would mow the lawn at once. He grew very tired of wandering about the garden, and he determined at last to go out into the world in search of a home.

It was quite a small garden, in the middle of a town. Flitterwing felt rather afraid of venturing into the streets, because he knew there would not be many fairies there, and not many nice places for a fairy to live in. So he was a little sad and anxious as he flew over the high brick wall of the garden and looked about him. He found himself in a queer little yard, not nearly as nice as the garden, with a pavement of round stones and an ugly brick house at one end of it. There never was a more unlikely place for a fairy to find a comfortable home. Flitterwing was on the point of flying back again over the garden wall, when he caught sight of something green at the further end of the courtyard. Some grass had grown up among the stones.

"The very place for me!" said Flitterwing to himself. "No one is likely to disturb me here, and I can fly across to the garden whenever I feel lonely."

So he found a cosy corner between two stones, where 87