"Not when I make a noise like a dog?" he asked, with surprise. "Why, that nearly always sends people into a good temper. You wait till I give you my imitation of a railway engine. Hark!" He set his teeth together and began to say "Isha--isha--isha," but the little girl turned away. She felt so indignant that she determined to tell her father about it at the very first opportunity, and see whether something could not be done. More than once her father had helped to straighten out tangled matters by simply writing a letter to the newspapers, and signing himself "An Indignant Ratepayer." [Illustration] And at the very moment along came her father. He, too, walked on all fours as other people did, and the little girl thought it caused him to look particularly undignified, but she did not trouble about this, for, stout as he was, she was really glad to see him. "How do you do," he said respectfully. "Can you give me a penny to buy some sweeties?" "Daddie, dear!" she cried with distress. "Don't you begin to be funny, please." "I'm not," he said. "But you are my parent, you know." "Yes," he sighed, "I'm aware of that. But under the new rules--you must have heard all about them--under the new rules parents have to be obedient to their children, and do everything their children tell them to do." "Not a bad idea," decided the little girl, after giving it consideration. "I think if you don't mind I will get you to come along now to Finchley Road and buy for me the mechanical rocking-horse that has been talked about for some time." "Under the old arrangement," he replied readily, "I should have been only too pleased, but the new rules say that children must buy presents for their father and mother." "How can we," getting rather cross, "how in the world can we when we have no money?" "I think," he said, "that it is expected you should go to work and earn some." "Never heard such nonsense in the whole course of my life," she declared, using a grown-up remark. "It's perfect rubbish. Do you mean to say that I shall have to go to concerts and sing as mamma does?" "That's the idea, I believe." "But I can't sing. I can't sing nearly well enough to earn money." "Well," said her father, after considering the matter, "what about going out as charwoman? You'd get two shillings a day and your lunch." She stood there for a few minutes, not daring to speak, and overcome with cares and responsibilities. Some one touched her on the shoulder, and she looked up. "Good fairy!" she cried. "Do you like the altogether different you asked for?" "No," she answered, "I don't like it at all. I wish now I hadn't put back the hands of the clock." "You mean to say that that was how you did it? You dare to tell me it was nothing cleverer than that? Now, just to punish you," said the fairy, speaking with stern decision, "I shall send you away to the old sort of world, and you'll simply have to make the best of it." * * * * *