“Oh, no-o! Do you know, I dreamed about our fairy last night, and she told me she was coming to see us to-day. I wonder if she will. Wouldn’t it be fine, just when we’ll be feeling like sitting by the fire and making believe, after all this riding!” “I wonder if she could take us to see any little girl we wanted to choose, Ruth?” Ruth looked big-eyed at that. “We never asked her that. Who would you like to see?” “I’d like to go to visit Alice.” “Alice?” “Alice in Wonderland, of course. Wouldn’t you?” Ruth fairly gasped. “Wouldn’t it be simply corking! Get along, Chump, what’s the matter with you?” This to her pony, who had shied at an old log by the trail. “Why, perhaps she would take us through the Looking-Glass! Haven’t you always just yearned to find our big mirror all misty, so’s you could climb through it the way she climbed through hers? Rose, let’s ask the fairy the very next time she comes.” “That’s what I mean to do. But remember that this is my own idea, Ruthsy, and let me do the asking.” [Illustration: “YOU SEE,” THEY BOTH REMARKED CONFIDENTIALLY, “WE KNEW ALICE, SO OF COURSE WE HAD TO CHOOSE YOU” ] Ruth was quite willing. And when the two girls reached home, and had unsaddled their mounts and tied them up in the barn, with plenty of hay to chew on, they ran eagerly into the house, feeling that the fairy might be waiting for them. But Marmie met them at the door, and in the excitement of telling all about the ride, and the race, and how good the lunch was, they forgot the fairy. It wasn’t till after supper that they found themselves alone in the living room, snuggled cosily before the fire, deliciously tired after their energetic day. And then, before they had a chance to remember that they were expecting to see, or at least to hear, her, there she was: “A penny for your thoughts,” said that chiming, crystal voice, close beside Ruth. Ruth jumped, and then laughed. “You darling fairy, how you startled me,” she exclaimed. “And how wonderful of you to come. Rose and I’ve been longing for you all day.” “Were you thinking of me just now?” the fairy asked. “N-no. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was feeling warm....” “Me too,” agreed Rose. “Warm and lazy.” “Altogether too lazy for a little visit with me, I suppose?” And then the idea flashed back into Rose’s mind. “Of course we aren’t! And oh, fairy, could you take us to see Alice in Wonderland?” “I don’t see why not. But you must both be very nice little girls with Alice. None of your Jiminy Cripseys, Rose, and neither of you must jump up and down and scream or run wild races. Alice is the best mannered little girl beyond the Magic Gate.” “We’ll be ever so good, fairy. Crikey, perhaps we’ll see the White Knight or the Walrus and the Carpenter.” Rose spoke as though the two latter were one. “There you go,” warned the fairy, in a smiling kind of voice. “What do you suppose Alice would make of ‘Crikey’?”