ice flowers
lay around, and in between the plates and glasses, with charming color
and taste.

Corniel, in white clothes, with several colored girls about him, who
were to assist in waiting, was flourishing about, placing food at proper
spaces, setting chairs, and giving orders in a pompous way Sally thought
he must enjoy.

Mammy Leezer's cookery was indeed most beautiful to look upon. The
porcupine marmalade, on two separate platters of white china ware edged
with gilt, was a thick jam made from plums or prunes, then turned out
from long oval moulds, and stuck all over with small spikes of cocoanut
meat, standing straight and stiff, looking in very truth like the quills
of the little animal called the porcupine.

The melon puff was a splendid-looking mass, heaped high in a tall glass
dish, and appearing as if made from strained melon pulp, and the whipped
whites of eggs with powdered sugar.

The peach tart was a form of pie with golden-looking sauce peeping up
between crisscross strips of rich puff paste. And pandowdy with sorghum
foam had the look, in a deep glass dish, of being apple sauce and
pie-crust mixed, with a delicious pyramid of golden-colored whipped
sugar standing in a point on the top.

Chicken salad, in other long white and gilt platters, was beautifully
ornamented with white and yellow rings of hard-boiled eggs, having
sprigs of green run through the rings in a way to form fancy garlands
above the crisp whitey-green bordering of lettuce leaves.

"Oh, it is the food of the Fairies! It is the food of the gods!"

Sally whispered in soft delight to herself, not noticing or scarcely
knowing what she was saying. All her soul was steeped in wonder at the
fine, the beautifully fine, things spread before her.

"But they are not for me," she sighed. "Oh, no, never can they be for
me!"

"Why not?" asked the cheery voice that Sally was beginning to listen
for, and to like much to hear.

"I'm so poor," answered Sally, with the usual downward look at frock,
hands, and feet.

"Lift yourself up," said the voice, that seemed ever determined to help
and comfort poor Sally.

"I will try," she replied. Then, in a sparkling, sunshiny way, she said
to herself:

"Oh, you shall be my good Fairy, you new voice! Why not! I will call you
the Fairy whenever you speak."

"Very well, then. You can call me the good Fairy, and Master Lionel can
be your Fairy Prince."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" gasped Sally. "How dreadful! How