Fairies I have met/The Box of Dreams
THE BOX OF DREAMS
LONG ago there lived in a far country a little girl called Gretel, whose mother was dying. Before she died she said to Gretel—
"I am very poor, and I have no money to leave for you after I am gone. I have nothing to give you but this box. It was given to me when I was a child by some one who was wise and good. You must be very careful of it, for it is full of Dreams, and they are hard to keep safely. You must never open the box except when you are alone, or the Dreams will fly away. But keep them safely till your hair is grey, and something will happen to surprise you."
Gretel took the box and hid it safely, and said nothing about it to any one. Her mother died a few days afterwards, and then Gretel was sent away to be a little servant, and to work very hard. She had to get up early, and light the fire, and feed the pigs, and she had to wash the dishes and scrub the floor, and do a great many other things, so that there was very little time for anything but work. All the time her box of Dreams was hidden away upstairs in her little trunk, underneath her Sunday frock. Often, when she was working in the kitchen, or in the farmyard among the hens, she was thinking of her box of Dreams; and sometimes when she was quite alone she would open it and look inside. The first time she opened the box she felt a little bit frightened, for she had never seen any Dreams before, and she was not sure what they were like; but when she saw them, soft and pink and downy, like lovely sleeping birds, she was not frightened any more.
"Oh, but they are pretty things!" she said to herself. "How I hope I shall be able to keep them safely till my hair is grey! They look as if a breath would blow them away, out of the window and over the hill!"
For a long time she was very careful not to let any one see her pretty rosy Dreams. Indeed, she never spoke of them; and the old farmer's wife, whose servant she was, little guessed that anything so strange as a box of Dreams was hidden upstairs in the garret, underneath Gretel's Sunday frock.
The farmer and his wife had a son about the same age as Gretel. His name was Eitel. He was a big, clumsy sort of boy, and not very clever; but Gretel had very few friends, so when Eitel was kind to her and talked to her over the fire in the evenings she was very glad. Sometimes he carried the big bucket for her when she went out to feed the pigs, and sometimes in the summer they made hay together in the field on the hillside. In this way they became great friends. Gretel told Eitel everything that had happened to her since she was a little child; and one day she told him about her box of Dreams.
"Let me see them, Gretel dear," said Eitel.
"Oh, but I mustn't!" said Gretel. "No one must see them till my hair is grey. If any one sees them they will fly away, out of the window and over the hill."
"What are they like?" asked Eitel. "And what are they for?"
"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 with nice people and sometimes with people who were not kind to her; but wherever she lived she had to scrub and sweep, and get up early and go to bed late. She still kept her box of Dreams safely in her little trunk, hidden under her Sunday frock. Since the time that she had lost so many of her Dreams she had never opened the box except when she was alone. She was afraid of losing some more; and, besides, she did not like it when Eitel laughed at her and called her pretty Dreams "nothing but pink fluff." So she made up her mind to wait till her hair was really grey.
It seemed to her sometimes that this would never happen! Her hair was browner than other people's, she thought, and was not going to turn grey at all. But though the time seemed so long to her, she was as a matter of fact still a young woman when she discovered that there were two grey hairs growing among the brown ones. She was combing her hair at the time, and the moment she saw the grey hairs she dropped the comb, and clapping her hands for joy ran quickly to get her box of Dreams out of her little trunk. She was so much excited that her trembling fingers could hardly undo the fastenings of the box.
When the box was at last open she was still more excited. Her mother had promised that she should be surprised, but she had not expected such a strange and delightful and altogether wonderful surprise as this! You could never guess what had happened! Her pretty rosy Dreams had all turned into jewels more splendid than any you ever saw or heard about! Every kind of precious stone was there—emeralds and pearls and fiery opals, glowing rubies and sea-blue sapphires, besides a great many strange stones whose names you have never heard.
Gretel gasped.
She sat on the floor beside the box, and stared and stared. She could hardly believe that the glittering things were real, and she could not believe at all that they belonged to her. At first she expected every minute that they would disappear, and she was afraid to touch them; but presently she took courage and lifted them out of the box one by one. Then she took them to the light, and they looked still more beautiful than before.
As Gretel sat on the floor near the window, with the many-coloured jewels glimmering and shimmering in her lap, she came gradually to understand that when her mother gave her the box of Dreams she gave her great riches.
Gretel lived to be very old, but she never lost her jewels. She was able now to show them to all the world without any danger of their flying away, and as time went on the people flocked to see her and her jewels. Eitel admired them as much as any one, but he could never be persuaded that the fluffy pink things he had once seen had really turned into these shining and wonderful stones.