This simple little sprite says much richer things than the miracles she does. Her talk is all alive. She is a poet, though she knows it not; or, rather _because_ she knows it not. She tells me the oddest and most brilliant things; and sometimes I write them down imperfectly, as well as I can remember them. Matter-of-fact persons shake their heads, and say, “What on earth does the woman mean? I never see and hear such things.” And grave people raise their spectacles and inquire, “Can you point me out any moral, or any use, in all this stuff?” “There is no sense in it,” says one; “The writer is insane,” says another; “She’s an enthusiast, but we must pardon _that_ weakness,” says a third, more magnanimous than others. The fairy and I have great fun together, while we listen to their jokes and apologies. The frolicsome little witch knows very well that it is _she_ who says the things that puzzle them; and _she_ knows the meaning very well; but she never tells it to those who “speer questions.” She is a philosopher, too, as well as a poet, without being aware of it. She babbles all manner of secrets, without knowing that they _are_ secrets. If you were to propound to her a theory concerning the relation between tones and colours, she would fold her wings over her face and drop asleep. But sound a flute, and she will leap up and exclaim, “Hear that beautiful, bright azure sound!” And if oboës strike in, she will smile all over, and say, “Now the yellow flowers are singing. How pert and _naïve_ they are!” It was she who led the little English girl to the piano, and put a melody of cowslip meadows in her brain; and as the child improvised, she smiled, and said ever to herself, “This is the tune with the golden spots.”