Produced by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net FAIRIES AFIELD BY MRS. MOLESWORTH WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1911 [Illustration] MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO * * * * * I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ONE WHO LOVES FAIRY STORIES THE REVEREND JOHN CYRIL HOWELL 155 Sloane Street, S.W. _May 8, 1911._ * * * * * [Illustration: Pretty Ysenda.] CONTENTS PAGE "ASK THE ROBIN" 1 A MAGIC TABLE 60 THE WEATHER MAIDEN 121 THE ENCHANTED TRUNKS 176 ILLUSTRATIONS TO FACE PAGE PRETTY YSENDA (P. 66) _Frontispiece_ "IT MAKES ME THINK OF ALL SORTS OF LOVELY SUMMER THINGS" 8 WITH A WONDERFUL NOTE OF EXCEEDING JOY, HE SPREAD HIS WINGS AND FLEW ROUND THE BOWER, RETURNING AGAIN TO PERCH ON THE CHILD'S STILL OUTSTRETCHED HAND, AS IF IN GRATITUDE 52 "YOUR MOTIVE WAS PURE KINDNESS--FREE FROM ALL SELFISHNESS, THEREFORE YOU SUCCEEDED" 119 "SO YOU HAVE COME AT LAST, LITTLE MAIDEN" 136 SHE CAUGHT SIGHT OF A TINY FIGURE PEERING AT HER FROM BEHIND THE RUBBISH 150 STOPPED AND KISSED IT GENTLY AND RESPECTFULLY 214 LO AND BEHOLD--COUSIN FELICITY HAD VANISHED 239 "Ask the Robin" Once upon a time--a fairly long ago time--there lived in a neat little cottage two young girls who were sisters. If you had gone to see them on a bright warm summer's day, I daresay you would have envied them and their life and their lot. For they were pretty and healthy and they loved each other dearly, and the cottage was charming to look at, in its dress of clustering roses and honeysuckle and traveller's joy, and other sweet and beautiful climbing, flowering plants. Furthermore, it stood in a little garden filled with treasures of different kinds, pansies, of which there was a great variety, and lilies and mignonette and all the flowers one loves to see in an old-fashioned garden of the kind. And the sisters kept it in perfect order, the beds were always raked, there was never a weed to be seen, the tiny plots of grass were like velvet.