"Would my jade jewel wish to show herself to strangers if she wore no tunic or shoes or rosettes?"
Mermei glanced down at her blue silk tunic embroidered in white and gold, at her scarlet shoes beaded at the tips so as to resemble the heads of kittens; and looking over to a mirror hung on the side of the wall where the sun shone, noted the purple rosettes in her hair and the bright butterfly's wing.
"Oh, no! honorable mother," said she, shaking her head with quite a shocked air.
"Then, when you hear the reason why the fairies do not appear to you except in your dreams, you will know that they are doing just as you would do were you in a fairy's shoes."
"A story! A story!" cried Mermei, clapping her hands and waving her fan, and Choy and Fei and Wei and Sui, who were playing battledore and shuttlecock on the green, ran into the house and grouped themselves around Mermei and the mother. They all loved stories.
"Many, many years ago," began the mother of Mermei, "when the sun was a warm-hearted but mischievous boy, playing all kinds of pranks with fruits and flowers and growing things, and his sister, the moon, was too young to be sad and serious, the fairies met together
