'The fairy smiled. "My condition is a very simple one," she said. "It is only this. Whenever, Elizabetha, you feel yourself in the least degree discomposed or out of temper, utter no word till you have mentally counted the magic number seven. And if you follow this rule, it will be but seldom that your tongue, of which I now restore to you the full control" (she touched it again with her wand as she spoke) "will lead you into trouble. Your disposition, though generous, is naturally hasty and impulsive, and till by a long course of self-restraint you have acquired complete mastery over yourself, you will find that I was right in my experiment of obliging your tongue to utter the exact opposite of what you, in your first haste, would have expressed." 'And before Elizabetha could reply, she had disappeared. 'But Elizabetha kept her promise, and to thus following her fairy friend's advice she owes it that she is now the object of universal esteem and affection, instead of being hated, despised, and feared as the owner of "a hasty tongue."' Cecil stopped. "Is that all?" said Carrots. "Yes, that's all. Did you like it?" "I did understand better about the fairy," Carrots replied. "I think she was a werry good fairy; don't you, Floss?" "_Very_," said Floss. "I think," she went on, "whenever I am cross, I shall _fancy_ my tongue is bewitched, just to see if it would be best to say the opposite of what I was going to say. Wouldn't it be fun?" "Better than fun, perhaps, Miss Flossie," said nurse. "I think it would be a very good thing if big people, too, were sometimes to follow the fairy's rule." "People as big as you, nursie?" asked Carrots. "Oh yes, my dear," said nurse. "It's a lesson we're all slow to learn, and many haven't learnt it by the end of their threescore years and ten--'to be slow to anger,' and to keep our tongues from evil." "_That's_ out of the Bible, nursie, all of it," said Floss, as if not altogether sure that she approved of the quotation. Cecil laughed. "What are you laughing at, Cis?" said Floss. "It _is_ out of the Bible." "Well, no one said it wasn't," said Cecil. "Cis," said Carrots, "will you read us another story, another day?" "If I can find one that you can understand," said Cecil. "Never mind if I can't," replied Carrots. "I like to hear you reading, even if I can't understand. I like your voice. I _think_," he added after a pause, "I _think_, Cis, I'll marry you too, when I'm big. You and Floss, and nurse." So Cecil had good reason to feel that she was greatly appreciated in the nursery. CHAPTER IX. SYBIL. "The children crowned themselves with wishes, And every wish came true." _Crowns for Children._