Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/181

 *trates heard of Jack's success, they made a law and wrote it on their books that henceforth he should be called

Jack-the-Giant-Killer,

and they presented him with a sword and belt, and on the belt they wrote these words,

"Here's the right valiant Cornish man Who slew the giant Cormoran."

—

THE PIXIES' THANKS

Once upon a time, and a long time ago, and a long, long time before that, a little old woman had a garden. And in this garden she planted a beautiful bed of tulips. The slim green stalks of them stood in the earth, tall and straight. And every other row of lovely cups they held was red and every other was yellow. At twilight the little old woman patted down the last of them, and went in to boil the kettle for her tea.

Now, as soon as she was gone there came peeping and tripping from the field near by a crowd of pixies. They ran between the rows, and skipped from one flower to the next, and put their slender fingers down into the cups, and clapped their fairy palms together and cried, "How lovely!" But the little old woman drinking her tea before the fire didn't hear a word.