"Dear me!" cried Sweet-One-Darling. "I should never be able to make a choice between you two, for both of you are equally acceptable. I am sure I should love to have the pleasant play of the daytime brought back to me, and I am quite as sure that I want to see all the pretty sights that are unfolded by the dreams which Gleam-o'-the-Murk brings." Sweet-One-Darling was so distressed that her cunning little underlip drooped and quivered perceptibly. She feared that her indecision would forfeit her the friendship of both the Dream-Fairies. "You have no need to feel troubled," said Frisk-and-Glitter, "for you are not expected to make any choice between us. We have our own way of determining the question, as you shall presently understand." Then the Dream-Fairies explained that whenever they came of an evening to bring their dreams to a little child they seated themselves on the child's eyelids and tried to rock them down. Gleam-o'-the-Murk would sit and rock upon one eyelid and Frisk-and-Glitter would sit and rock on the other. If Gleam-o'-the-Murk's eyelid closed first the child would dream the dreams Gleam-o'-the-Murk brought it; if Frisk-and-Glitter's eyelid closed first, why, then, of course, the child dreamt the dreams Frisk-and-Glitter brought. It would be hard to conceive of an arrangement more amicable. "But suppose," suggested Sweet-One-Darling, "suppose both eyelids close at the same instant? Which one of you fairies has his own way, _then_?" "Ah, in that event," said they, "neither of us wins, and, since neither wins, the sleeper does not dream at all, but awakes next morning from a sound, dreamless, refreshing sleep." Sweet-One-Darling was not sure that she fancied this alternative, but of course she could not help herself. So she let the two little Dream-Fairies flutter across her shoulders and clamber up her cheeks to their proper places upon her eyelids. Gracious! but how heavy they seemed when they once stood on her eyelids! As I told you before their actual combined weight hardly exceeded the sixteenth part of four dewdrops, yet when they are perched on a little child's eyelids (tired eyelids at that) it really seems sometimes as if they weighed a ton! It was just all she could do to keep her eyelids open, yet Sweet-One-Darling was determined to be strictly neutral. She loved both the Dream-Fairies equally well, and she would not for all the world have shown either one any partiality. Well, there the two Dream-Fairies sat on Sweet-One-Darling's eyelids, each one trying to rock his particular eyelid down; and each one sung his little lullaby in the pipingest voice imaginable. I am not positive, but as nearly as I can remember Frisk-and-Glitter's song ran in this wise: Dream, dream, dream Of meadow, wood, and stream; Of bird and bee, Of flower and tree, All under the noonday gleam; Of the song and play Of mirthful day-- Dream, dream, dream!