have displeased the colt, for he was not at all sedate in character. But the farmer who owned him did not think of that. He came to see me about it, thoughtlessly bringing his pitchfork with him; so I found it best to promise to remove the wings. Luckily, she had left the book open at the very charm that had been used, and I was able to undo it; though there was some delay, caused by the necessity of using a lock of hair from the head of the Sultan, who was kind enough to grow one for me as soon as he could.
Now that child did n't mean any harm; she could n't see why a horse should n't fly,—the little goose!—nor could I explain it to her very clearly. She promised, however, not to do so again, and of course we said no more about it.
The week after, coming home one day, I found my room filled to the brim, so to speak, with an enormous green dragon, who blew smoke from his nostrils so profusely that it gave me some trouble to convince the villagers that there was no fire and that they were nuisances, with their buckets and ladders!
Of course my magic-books were inaccessible, and we took lodgings with a neighbor until the dragon was starved out. The dragon's skin made an excellent rug, but the experience was not enjoyable. I could not reprove my niece for this, because she explained very frankly that she had made the dragon larger than she intended; it was only a misfit.
You may think me absent-minded; but it never occurred to me to forbid these practices, although, had I done so, she would have obeyed me. I forgot about it, except when some new prank brought the matter to my mind, and then I became absorbed in remedying the difficulty caused by her experiment. Once I tried to divert her mind by inducing her to adopt a doll which the raven had cleverly secured from somebody; but her care of it was so
