So Flax went sorrowfully into the house. There was the tea-kettle singing beside the "skettle," which had some nice smelling soup in it, the table was laid for supper, and there sat her mother with the baby in her lap and the others all around her--just as they had looked in the Pot of Gold. Flax had never been so glad to see them before--and if she didn't hug and kiss them all! "I found the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow, mother," cried she, "and it was not full of gold, at all; but you and father and the children looked out of it at me, and I saw the house and garden and everything in it." Her mother looked at her lovingly. "Yes, Flax dear," said she. "But father said I was mistaken," said Flax, "and did not find it." "Well dear," said her mother, "your father is a poet, and very wise; we will say no more about it. You can sit down here and hold the baby now, while I make the tea." Flax was perfectly ready to do that; and, as she sat there with her darling little baby brother crowing in her lap, and watched her pretty little brothers and sisters and her dear mother, she felt so happy that she did not care any longer whether she found the true Pot of Gold or not. But, after all, do you know, I think her father was mistaken, and that she had. [F] From "The Pot of Gold and Other Stories," by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company; used by special arrangement. [Illustration] [Illustration: VERSES ABOUT FAIRIES] THE FAIRY THORN _An Ulster Ballad_ BY SAMUEL FERGUSON "Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning wheel, For your father's on the hill, and your mother is asleep: Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a Highland reel Around the fairy thorn on the steep." At Anna Grace's door, 't was thus the maidens cried-- Three merry maidens fair, in kirtles of the green; And Anna laid the sock and the weary wheel aside-- The fairest of the four, I ween. They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve, Away in milky wavings of the neck and ankle bare; The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave, And the crags in the ghostly air; And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go, The maids along the hillside have ta'en their fearless way, Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray. The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim, Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee; The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head, gray and dim, In ruddy kisses sweet to see. The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row, Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem; And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds, they go-- Oh, never carroled bird like them!