THE SOCIABLE SAND WITCH BY T. L. SAPPINGTON Author of "The Grateful Fairy" NEW YORK BARSE & HOPKINS PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1923, By Barse & Hopkins PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. [Illustration: Getting ready for autumn.] CONTENTS THE SOCIABLE SAND WITCH THE FOUNTAIN OF RICHES OBSTINATE TOWN TOOBAD THE TAILOR THE SNOOPING-BUG THE WRONG JACK THE SECOND STORY BROTHERS THE IMAGINARY ISLAND THE DANCING PEARL THE INHERITED PRINCESS ILLUSTRATIONS Getting ready for Autumn So Junior held his nose tight It was raining cats and dogs The Poppykok pasted a magic postage stamp on his cheek He began tearing at his clothes with all his might The jar broke into a thousand pieces Out of the hole came a giant He turned and whipped the fan open Upon his vision burst a band of coal-black savages Floo the Wizard at work He watched her whirl about The minute the parade was over, he started off Underneath the window sat the twenty-headed Gallopus THE SOCIABLE SAND WITCH Of all the witches that may be found in all the fairy tales ever told there is none more delightfully sociable than the Sand Witch. This Witch, who lives underneath the heaps of sand at the ocean's edge, where, in the summertime, you dig with your shovel, is not at all like other witches. She never rides on a broomstick, and she never goes down chimneys. In the first place there are no broomsticks or chimneys on the beach at the sea-shore, and in the second place she would not know how to ride on a broomstick or climb down a chimney, if there were. All the Sand Witch knows how to do is to sink into the sand when anything scares her, and to come up through the sand when she sees a chance to get acquainted with a person she never was acquainted with before. So now you know what a Sand Witch is. And if Junior Jenks, seven years old, and dreadfully sunburnt, had known what you know, he would have been much better prepared to face the one that came up right under his nose all of a sudden one hot July morning.