en.

Dame Margery Twist lived all alone with a great tabby cat. She dwelt in
a little cottage that stood back from the road, and just across the way
from the butcher's shop. All within was as neat and as bright as a new
pin, so that it was a delight just to look upon the row of blue dishes
upon the dresser, the pewter pipkins as bright as silver, or the sanded
floor, as clean as your mother's table. Over the cottage twined sweet
woodbines, so that the air was ladened with their fragrance in the
summer-time, when the busy, yellow-legged bees droned amid the blossoms
from the two hives that stood along against the wall. But the wonder of
the garden was the tulip bed, for there were no tulips in all England
like them, and folks came from far and near, only to look upon them and
to smell their fragrance. They stood in double rows, and were of all
colors--white, yellow, red, purple, and pied. They bloomed early, and
lasted later than any others, and, when they were in flower, all the air
was filled with their perfume.

Now all of these things happened before the smoke of the factories and
the rattling of the steam-cars had driven the fairy folks away from this
world into No-man's-land, and this was the secret of the dame's fine
tulip bed. For the fairies dwelt among the flowers, and she often told
her gossips how that she could hear the fairy mothers singing their
babies to sleep at night, when the moon was full and the evening was
warm. She had never seen the little folks herself, for few folks are
given to look upon them, and Dame Margery's eyes were not of that
nature. Nevertheless, she heard them, and that, in my opinion, is the
next best thing to seeing them.

Dame Margery Twist, as I said, was a good, kind, comfortable old soul,
and was, moreover, the best nurse in all of Tavistock town. Was any one
ill, it was Dame Margery who was called upon to attend him; as for the
dame herself, she was always ready to bring a sick body into good health
again, and was always paid well for the nursing.

[Illustration: DAME TWIST DRINKETH TEA]

One evening the dame was drinking her tea by herself with great comfort.
It was just at the dusking of the twilight; the latticed window was
opened, so that the little breezes came rushing into the room, or stayed
a while to play wantonly with the white linen curtains. The tabby cat
was purring in the door-way, and the dame was enjoying the sweetness of
the summer-time. There came a knock