Page:Fairies I have met.djvu/117

THE BOX OF DREAMS "They are lovely," said Gretel, "but I don't know yet what they are for."

"Come, let me see them," said Eitel coaxingly. "I believe I see a grey hair on your head, Gretel."

It was really a bit of white thread, but Gretel thought her hair must be growing grey, so she ran upstairs and fetched the box of Dreams down to the kitchen. She opened the box very carefully, and Eitel peeped in.

''Pouf! Pouf!'' Half-a-dozen soft rosy Dreams fluttered out from under the lid, and hovered in the air for a moment like wisps of pink mist. Gretel shut the box with a snap, and tried to catch the floating Dreams with her fingers. But it was too late. They floated higher and higher, farther and farther, out of the window and over the hill.

"Oh, Eitel," cried Gretel, sobbing, "I have lost my Dreams—so many of them—so many of them!"

"Well," said Eitel, "I don't see that there's much to cry about. They were only pink fluff after all! I wouldn't cry about pink fluff if I were you!"

So Eitel went out of the house whistling, and thinking that girls were sometimes very silly; while Gretel carried her box upstairs, crying, and thinking that boys were often very unkind. As soon as she was in her room she opened her box again, and found to her great joy that it was still half full of beautiful Dreams.

She soon made friends with Eitel again, but she never spoke to him any more about her box of Dreams.

As the years went by Gretel became first a big girl and then a grown-up woman, and still she had to work for her living. She lived in a good many different places, sometimes 99