Fairies I have met/The Fairy who was looking for a Home
THE FAIRY WHO WAS
LOOKING FOR A HOME
LITTLE Fairy Flitterwing had no home. Whenever he settled down in a place something happened to turn him out. If he found a comfortable rosebud some one would come and pick it, and then it died and he was homeless again. If he chose a pink-edged daisy to live in, the gardener would mow the lawn at once. He grew very tired of wandering about the garden, and he determined at last to go out into the world in search of a home.
It was quite a small garden, in the middle of a town. Flitterwing felt rather afraid of venturing into the streets, because he knew there would not be many fairies there, and not many nice places for a fairy to live in. So he was a little sad and anxious as he flew over the high brick wall of the garden and looked about him. He found himself in a queer little yard, not nearly as nice as the garden, with a pavement of round stones and an ugly brick house at one end of it. There never was a more unlikely place for a fairy to find a comfortable home. Flitterwing was on the point of flying back again over the garden wall, when he caught sight of something green at the further end of the courtyard. Some grass had grown up among the stones.
"The very place for me!" said Flitterwing to himself. "No one is likely to disturb me here, and I can fly across to the garden whenever I feel lonely."
So he found a cosy corner between two stones, where the grass was thick and soft, and there he made up his mind to stay. It was not, of course, the very best kind of place for a fairy, but, after all, it was quiet and near his friends, and he was terribly tired of moving about from rose to rose and from daisy to daisy. So he thought he would make the best of it.
Very soon he felt quite at home in the grass-patch at the end of the yard. Every morning, of course, he had to attend to the grass and see that it was always fresh and green, for it is the business of every fairy to take care of the place he lives in. He does it instead of paying rent. Then, after polishing his wings nicely and making them shine like opals, he would fly across the brick wall and have a chat with the grass-fairies and flower-fairies in the garden.
His life went on in this quiet and comfortable way for some time.
But one morning poor Flitterwing received a great shock. He was very busy cleaning the grass with a dewdrop, and thinking how strong and tall the blades had grown since he first began to take care of them. They were a good deal taller than himself now, and he was not able to see over them. So, when he heard a heavy footstep clattering across the yard, he peered between the blades of grass to see who was coming.
"Oh dear, oh dear," he cried, "here's that dreadful gardener! I'm sure he's going to turn me out!"
He quickly dropped the crumpled cobweb soaked in dewdrop with which he was rubbing the green blades, and folding his wings closely round him he hid himself in the grass, and waited to see what was going to happen.
The gardener was carrying a basket in one hand, and in the other a tool with dreadful prongs. He was going to pull up the grass that had grown among the stones! Poor Flitterwing's nice new home was going to be spoilt!
One by one the tufts were dragged up by the roots, while the sharp prongs clinked against the stones and the gardener's fingers crumpled up the blades of grass that had looked so green and fresh a few minutes before. Flitterwing was terribly frightened.
"The sooner I get out of this the better," he said to himself, skipping away from the gardener's big fingers. Then he spread his wings and flew up and away, over the wall and over the garden and on and on. He went on flying, flying, till all his friends were left far behind and he came to strange streets such as he had never seen before. Still he went on flying, flying. You see he was extremely anxious to be very far away from the gardener with the big fingers and the terrible, sharp prongs.
At last he became dreadfully tired. It would be impossible, he felt, to go on flying much longer, so he looked about him for shelter. He saw an open window, and beyond it a large cool room. Here was shelter at all events, so he flew straight in. There were a number of tables and chairs in the room, and at each table a man sat writing; but Flitterwing was too much frightened to see anything. He only wanted to find a place where he could hide and rest. A large ink-pot stood on a table, and just inside the ink-pot was a little ledge where a fairy might rest comfortably. Flitterwing lost no time; he darted into the ink-pot and sat down on the ledge. In a few moments he folded his tired wings about him and fell fast asleep.
Now, the room into which Flitterwing had flown was a place where a great deal of business was done. Every day a number of men sat there adding up figures and writing letters about dull things that neither you nor I could understand. If you have done many sums, you will agree with me that no sensible man could really like spending all his time in adding up pounds, shillings, and pence. Very few of the men in this big room really liked it. Some of them wanted to be playing cricket or golf, some would rather have been reading books or listening to beautiful music; and every one of them was longing to be in the country among the flowers and the fairies. And there was one among them—a little man with a pale face and a thin coat—who wished above all things to be making poetry. There were two good reasons against his doing this. In the first place, he was obliged to earn money, and this is more easily done by adding up figures than by making poetry; and in the second place, he did not in the least know how poetry ought to be made.
On the sunny morning when Flitterwing took refuge in the ink-pot the Man in the Thin Coat was very busy. There were rows and rows of figures waiting to be added up, so that there seemed to be no end to them. A large sheet of paper was before him on which he was doing these sums, and the figures were arranged in terribly long columns—and no doubt you know how unpleasant that is. Suddenly something glittered in the air for a moment and then disappeared. It was so bright that it caught his eye and made him lose his place. He thought it was some beautiful kind of insect with the sunshine caught in its wings.
"It was like a messenger from the summer!" he said to himself.
Then he dipped his pen in the ink-pot and went back to his sums.
He had been working busily for some time when he noticed something very curious. His pen was not writing figures at all! He was thinking about figures, and he wished to put figures on the paper, so it was a very strange thing that his pen was writing words all the time. The words were arranged in short lines with a capital letter at the beginning of each line,
"Dear me, how annoying!" he said to himself. "What can I have been thinking of?" This will never do."
So he took a fresh sheet and began again.
He imagined that he was copying all the figures on to the clean sheet of paper, for that was what he intended to do. He wrote the figures very quickly, as he thought because he wanted to make up for lost time. Then he glanced at what he had written—and threw down his pen angrily.
There were no figures at all on the paper; nothing but line after line of words. He began to think he must have got a sunstroke.
"This is really terrible!" he muttered. "I must pay more attention to what I am doing."
So he took another clean sheet of paper and began again.
It was no use; the pen refused to make a single figure.
Then the Man in the Thin Coat was in despair. He pushed the paper away from him and threw himself back in his chair.
"There is something very serious the matter with me," he said to himself. He did not notice that another man had come up to the table and was gathering together the sheets of paper that lay on it. This was the person who paid the Man in the Thin Coat for doing his sums for him. He had a round face and a big waistcoat.
"Come, come! what's this?" he said, looking at the sheets of paper. Poetry, I declare! So you're a poet, are you? That's all very well, but I don't pay you to write poetry."
The poor Man in the Thin Coat looked very much disturbed. When you come to think of it, it is a disturbing thing to find you are writing poetry when you imagine you are doing sums.
"I couldn't help it," he said meekly.
"Yes, yes, that's the excuse they all make," said the Man with the Big Waistcoat. Then he took up the papers and began to read. There was silence in the room while he was reading the poem that the Man in the Thin Coat had written by mistake; every one left off working, and watched with great interest to see what would happen. The silence lasted for some time.
"Dear me!" said the Man with the Big Waistcoat at last. "This is a very beautiful poem?"
Then he began to read aloud.
The poem was about the summer; about the sunshine and the blue sky and the singing larks that were far away from that ugly room. It seemed as though the far-ofF fields and the glory of the sun had been really brought there, to the tired men who sat listening. And to each man as he listened came a dream of the thing he loved best. To one man the room seemed to have turned into a garden; the scent of a thousand roses was in the air, and the colours of a thousand flowers. Another man thought he was in a field, lying under a tree and looking at the pattern of the leaves against the sky. And another saw the sunshine sparkling on the dear sea, and the little ripples running races on the sand. But the Man in the Thin Coat saw more things than any of them.
And while they were all listening to the beautiful poem about the summer, little Fairy Flitterwing slipped out of the ink-pot and flew off to play with a sunbeam on the window-sill. The sunbeam showed him a very comfortable scarlet geranium that was growing in a window not far off, so Flitterwing went to live in it, and found a safe home at last.
And the Man in the Thin Coat went back to his sums. He was happier than he had ever been before, because he had written a beautiful poem. He was never able to write any more poetry, and he thought this was rather odd until, years afterwards, his little daughter guessed the truth. He had just finished reading to her his poem about the summer.
"Why, Daddy," she said, "there must have been a fairy in your ink-pot when you wrote that!"