Page:The Floating Prince - Frank R Stockton.djvu/120

Rh "you would not cut much wood. Good-day!"—and he skipped away behind the wood-pile.

Jules jumped up and looked after him, but he was gone. These fairy-people have a strange way of disappearing.

Jules was not married and had no home of his own. He lived with a good couple who had a little house and an only daughter, and that was about the sum of their possessions. The money Jules paid for his living helped them a little, and they managed to get along. But they were quite poor.

Jules was not poor. He had no one but himself to support, and he had laid by a sum of money to live on when he should be too old to work.

But you never saw a man so disappointed as he was that evening as he sat by the fire after supper.

He had told the family all about his meeting with the dwarf, and lamented again and again that he had lost such a capital chance of making his fortune.

"If I only could have thought what it was best to do!" he said, again and again.

"I know what I should have done," said Selma, the only daughter of the poor couple, a girl about eleven years old.

"What?" asked Jules, eagerly.

"I should have just snatched the little fellow up, and rubbed his feet and wrapped them in my shawl until they were warm," said she.

"But he would not have liked that," said Jules. "He was an old man and very particular."

"I would not care," said Selma; "I wouldn't let such a little fellow stand suffering in the snow, and I wouldn't care how old he was."

"I hope you'll never meet any of these fairy people," said