, pointing to Ting-a-ling; and then he
told the whole story of their doings, and Ting-a-ling had to explain how
he had gone with the Giant. Tur-il-i-ra listened until they had quite
finished, and then exclaimed, "Well! I never saw such a little thing as
you are, Ting-a-ling, for being in the right place at the right time.
Never, never!" And he brought his hand down on the table with such an
emphatic bang, that Ting-a-ling and the green fairy shot into the air
like rifle-balls. Ting-a-ling went up, up, and up, until a high wind
took him, and it blew him over a river, and a wood, and a high hill, and
a wide plain; and then he fell down, down, down,--right into the middle
of a soft powder puff-ball, with which a lady was powdering her neck.

"Mercy on us!" cried the lady, when she saw a little fairy in the
puff-ball that she was just going to put up to her throat.

[Illustration]

"It's only I, Nerralina," cried Ting-a-ling, who immediately recognized
her; "wait a minute, until I get my breath."

Sure enough, it was Nerralina, the Princess's lady, who had been on a
visit to her mother, in a distant country, and returning, had ordered
her slaves to pitch her tent where she now was, about half a day's
journey from the palace. Ting-a-ling told his story, and they had a nice
time, talking of their past adventures; and in the morning Nerralina
took Ting-a-ling with her to his home in the palace gardens.

As to the green fairy, he came down in a spider web. When he got out and
stood on the grass, he said, "I shall not go back to that Giant. He is
good, but he is too violent."

So he went to the river and got a nice chip, and he loaded it with
honeysuckles and clover blossoms, and pushed it off into the stream; he
then lay down on his back in the middle of his clover, and, sucking a
honeysuckle, floated away in the moonlight, down to his home, where he
arrived in two or three days, just as his honeysuckles were all gone.

When Tur-il-i-ra saw what he had done, he was in great trouble indeed.
He ordered all his slaves to bring their little children, and he
gathered up great handfuls of them, and spread them out all over the
grass, so that they might look for the two lost fairies. But of course
they could not find them; and just as the sun was setting, and the Giant
was going to bed in despair, there came a horseman from Nerralina,
telling him that Ting-a-ling was safe, and was going home with her.
Early in the morning Tur-i