Page:Fairies I have met.djvu/32

FAIRIES I HAVE MET The third thing that Laughing Sapphire found was the best of all. To find it he was obliged to leave his nautilus-boat and dive down to the bottom of the sea. I must not tell you now of all the wonders he saw there, for it would take me too long, and it would be very difficult for me to stop. But when he came to the surface again he was clasping a splendid pearl tightly in his hand.

"If this doesn't persuade them," he said, chuckling, "that the sea is the best place in the world, nothing will!"

Meanwhile the land-fairy had been busy too.

First he flew to a beautiful garden, full of roses and verbena and everything sweet. It was a garden he often visited, for many of the flower-fairies there were friends of his. So he knew exactly where to find the sweetest lilies. There were great clumps of them—tall, white lilies with drooping heads and hearts of gold. Sweet-of-the Mountain crept into one of them, and came out with a big, heavy drop of honey. The scent of it was so strong that all the fairies in the garden sniffed joyfully. Then Sweet-of-the-Mountain flew over the wall, and away and away till he came to a wood.

In the wood there was perfect silence. If you had walked there your footsteps would have made no sound, for the ground was soft and springy with moss. There was moss everywhere: moss on the tree-stems and on the stones, and carpets and cushions of moss on the ground. The fairy picked a piece of it—a piece like a soft green feather—and flew off with it out of the wood.

Then he went back to his own hills, where the heather grew right up to the edge of the cliff; for he knew that 26