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It may seem absurd to associate fairyland with the depths of the sea; but the shy explorer of many a coral grove has been heard to say that the scenes fulfilled his ideals of what the realms of the fairies might be like.
The central ornament is the Chimes, a musical group of stalactites which is scarcely more beautiful than Cleopatra's Needle, at a distance of a few feet to one side, a transparent column four feet in height and having an average circumference of seventeen inches. The Abode of the Fairies is a similar, though smaller room, with The Tower of Babel for a handsome show-piece.
"I hear bells," she announced dreamily, "little tinkly bells like fairies." Aunt Abigail jumped, and this time everybody's ears were sharp enough to hear the fairy-like chime. "Of course," cried Aunt Abigail beaming. "They're in the pocket. I told my dressmaker that if I was the only woman in the United States to boast a pocket, I wouldn't be satisfied without one.
The Marquis de Wringhen, seeing them in the moonlight, said to the King, who was walking with him, "Let us turn aside, Sire, in this direction; yonder there are three solitary nymphs, who seem waiting for fairies or lovers." Then they noiselessly approached the tree that I have mentioned, and lost not a word of all the talk in which the fair ladies were engaged.
"Where do they go, then, I wonder?" asked a muffled voice in the darkened circle of listeners. "Back to the fairies' palace, of course, underground," said Betty. "But they like the world best, they're such sociable little darlings; and when the heather-bells are coming out they all return, and each fairy takes possession of a bell and lives there. She makes it her home.
The palaces of rose and amber that the busy fingers of the fire fairies had built up in the white heat of their enthusiasm were in ruins. The light had gone out. Only gray ashes remained, with here and there a dead cinder. Miss Clendenning rose from her chair, stood a moment in deep thought, and said, aloud: "If she loves him, she shall have him.
She pretented to see Gilian for the first time, staring at him boldly, with a look that made him certain she was thinking of the many times he had manifestly kept out of her way. It made him uneasy, but he was more uneasy when she spoke. "The Paymaster's boy," said she. "Oh! he would lose himself on the way home, and the fairies might get him. When I go I must find my own way.
It was pretty to look at just then, for the wood was burning redly, and at the tiniest touch a whole bevy of lovely sparks would fly out like bees from a hive, or a covey of birds, or better still, like a thousand imprisoned fairies escaping at some magic touch. Of all things, Jeanne loved to give this magic touch.
Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of thirty years back, who, as a lonely only child, had lived so intensely secret, imaginative a life, peopling the prim alleys of Hyde Park with fairies, imps, tricksy hobgoblins in whom he more than half believed, and longing even then, as ever after, for the unattainable, never carelessly happy as his father and mother believed him to be....
"I think I'll rest here a bit, and perhaps an adventure may come along." You see Buddy was very fond of adventures, which means having something happen to you. He was almost as much that way as Alice Wibblewobble, the little duck girl, was fond of romantic things that is she liked fairies, and princes, and kings, and knights with golden swords, and all oddities like that.
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