I entered the vicar’s room this evening just as the group had collected round him. By the side of his wife sat a lady in whom I feel a keen interest. Her face wears that kind of calm which speaks of the lassitude bequeathed by sorrow. She is the aunt of my beloved one. Lily had nestled herself on a low ottoman, at the good pastor’s feet, with one of his little girls, round whose shoulder she had wound her arm. She is much more fond of the companionship of children than that of girls of her own age. The vicar’s wife, a very clever woman, once, in my hearing, took her to task for this preference, asking her why she persisted in grouping herself with mere infants who could teach her nothing? Ah! could you have seen the innocent, angel-like expression of her face when she answered simply, “I suppose because with them I feel safer, I mean nearer to God.” Mr. Emlyn--that is the name of the vicar--deduced his homily this evening from a pretty fairy tale which Lily had been telling to his children the day before, and which he drew her on to repeat. Take, in brief, the substance of the story:-- “Once on a time, a king and queen made themselves very unhappy because they had no heir to their throne; and they prayed for one; and lo, on some bright summer morning, the queen, waking from sleep, saw a cradle beside her bed, and in the cradle a beautiful sleeping babe. Great day throughout the kingdom! But as the infant grew up, it became very wayward and fretful: it lost its beauty; it would not learn its lessons; it was as naughty as a child could be. The parents were very sorrowful; the heir, so longed for, promised to be a great plague to themselves and their subjects. At last one day, to add to their trouble, two little bumps appeared on the prince’s shoulders. All the doctors were consulted as to the cause and the cure of this deformity. Of course they tried the effect of back-bands and steel machines, which gave the poor little prince great pain, and made him more unamiable than ever. The bumps, nevertheless, grew larger, and as they increased, so the prince sickened and pined away. At last a skilful surgeon proposed, as the only chance of saving the prince’s life, that the bumps should be cut out; and the next morning was fixed for that operation. But at night the queen saw, or dreamed she saw, a beautiful shape standing by her bedside. And it said to her reproachfully, ‘Ungrateful woman! How wouldst thou repay me for the precious boon that my favour bestowed on thee! In me behold the Queen of the Fairies. For the heir to thy kingdom, I consigned to thy charge an infant from Fairyland, to become a blessing to thee and to thy people; and thou wouldst inflict upon it a death of torture by the surgeon’s knife.’ And the queen answered, ‘Precious indeed thou mayest call the boon,--a miserable, sickly, feverish changeling.’