Now, the very first thing she did was to cut the gilt button off the coat and put a sober black one in his place, and it happened that she let the gilt button fall, and he rolled away under the hearth and lay all night long amongst the dust and ashes. In the morning little Tommy felt quite grand in his tidy coat, though certainly he had a pang when he found his gilt button had gone. He went downstairs, and, finding his Mother had overslept herself, set to work to clean the hearth and light the fire, and very pleased he was when he saw his old friend again amongst the ashes. He slipped him into his trousers pocket, and there the button lived for many a long day. Tommy grew to really love him, and wouldn’t have parted with him for anything. When rich boys jingled the pennies in their pockets, Tommy shook up the gilt button against a piece of slate-pencil, and it sounded _almost_ as well. And what did the gilt button think about it? He _liked_ it; yes, he really did—at least, as soon as he got used to the dark depths of the trousers pocket. He found out, don’t you see, that Tommy loved him, and everyone knows, the wide world over, that it is better, yes, a thousand times better, to be loved than to be admired. _L. L. Weedon._ [Illustration] THE GRATEFUL FAIRY. THERE was once a Fairy who lived in a big library. It was rather a dull place to live in, but the Fairy liked quiet. One day the room suddenly grew noisy, and the Fairy peeped out from behind the poetry-book where she lived, and saw two children playing. They were building a house with the big books, a solid calf-skin house, with a vellum roof. [Illustration] “This would be a nice house for me,” said the Fairy, “rather large perhaps, but I like plenty of room. That poetry-book was too thin!” So she crept under the roof, which was made of a volume of Rollin’s Ancient History. Her new house was rather musty, but it was large and comfortable. She was just settling down when a prim little girl leading a fat dog came into the room and scolded her little brother and sister, shut up the Ancient History, put it up back on the shelf, and the Fairy was shut in it. She had to make herself very small, I can tell you, so as to be comfortable between the pages. But she did it, and then went to sleep. “I shall wake when they open the book again,” she said, and so she did. But the book was not opened again for years and years and years. And at last it was opened by a learned Professor, and he read in it through his spectacles, but he didn’t see the Fairy. “Why,” she said, “you’re the little boy who once built a house with the books.” “Am I?” said the Professor, with a sigh.