"I am going to tell you about all the pretty things as we go along," she says, patronizingly yet half shyly, rubbing her cheek against Miss Broughton's shoulder. She is a tall, slender child, and to do this has to stoop a little. "You fairy," she goes on, admiringly, encouraged perhaps by the fact that she is nearly as tall as her instructress, "you are just like Hans Andersen's tales. I don't know why." "Amy! Miss Broughton won't like you to speak to her like that," says Cissy, coloring. But Georgie laughs. "I don't mind a bit," she says, giving the child's hand a reassuring pressure. "I am accustomed to being called that, and, indeed, I rather like it now. I suppose I _am_ very small. But" (turning anxiously to Cissy, and speaking quite as shyly as the child Amy had spoken a moment since) "there is a name to which I am not accustomed, and I hate it. It is 'Miss Broughton.' Won't you call me 'Georgie?'" "Oh, are you sure you won't mind?" says the lively Cissy, with a deep and undisguised sigh of relief. "Well, that is a comfort! it is all I can do to manage your name. You don't look a bit like a 'Miss Anything,' you know, and 'Georgie' suits you down to the ground." "Look, look! There is the tree where the fairies dance at night," cries Amy, eagerly, her little, thin, spiritual face lighting with earnestness, pointing to a magnificent old oak-tree that stands apart from all the others, and looks as though it has for centuries defied time and storm and proved itself indeed "sole king of forests all." "Every night the fairies have a ball there," says Amy, in perfect good faith. "In spring there is a regular wreath of blue-bells all round it, and they show where the 'good folks' tread." "How I should like to see them!" says Georgie, gravely. I think, in her secret soul, she is impressed by the child's solemnity, and would prefer to believe in the fairies rather than otherwise. "Well, _you_ ought to know all about them," says Amy, with a transient but meaning smile: "you belong to them, don't you? Well" (dreamily), "perhaps some night we shall go out hand in hand and meet them here, and dance with them all the way to fairy-land." "Miss Broughton,--there--through the trees! Do you see something gleaming white?" asks Ethel, the eldest pupil. "Yes? Well, there, in that spot, is a marble statue of a woman, and underneath her is a spring. It went dry ever so many years ago, but when Clarissa's great grandfather died the waters burst out again, and every one said the statue was crying for him, he was so good and noble and so well beloved." "I think you might have let me tell that story," says Amy, indignantly. "You knew I wanted to tell her that story." "I didn't," with equal indignation; "and, besides, you told her about the fairies' ball-room. I said nothing about that." "Well, at all events," says Georgie, "they were two of the prettiest stories I ever heard in my life. I don't know which was the prettier."