rom
the tulip bed, but she could see nothing.

The next morning she walked among her flowers, but there were no signs
of any one having been there the night before.

On the following night she was again wakened by sweet singing and babies
laughing. She rose and stole softly through her garden. The moon was
shining brightly on the tulip bed, and the flowers were swaying to and
fro. The old woman looked closely and she saw, standing by each tulip,
a little Fairy mother who was crooning and rocking the flower like a
cradle, while in each tulip-cup lay a little Fairy baby laughing and
playing.

The good old woman stole quietly back to her house, and from that time
on she never picked a tulip, nor did she allow her neighbors to touch
the flowers.

The tulips grew daily brighter in color and larger in size, and they
gave out a delicious perfume like that of roses. They began, too, to
bloom all the year round. And every night the little Fairy mothers
caressed their babies and rocked them to sleep in the flower-cups.

The day came when the good old woman died, and the tulip-bed was torn
up by folks who did not know about the Fairies, and parsley was planted
there instead of the flowers. But the parsley withered, and so did all
the other plants in the garden, and from that time nothing would grow
there.

But the good old woman's grave grew beautiful, for the Fairies sang
above it, and kept it green; while on the grave and all around it there
sprang up tulips, daffodils, and violets, and other lovely flowers of
spring.

THE STREAM THAT RAN AWAY

BY MARY AUSTIN (ADAPTED)

In a short and shallow canyon running eastward toward the sun, one may
find a clear, brown stream called the Creek of Pinon Pines; that is not
because it is unusual to find pinon trees in that country, but because
there are so few of them in the canyon of the stream. There are all
sorts higher up on the slopes,--long-leaved yellow pines, thimble cones,
tamarack, silver fir, and Douglas spruce; but in the canyon there
is only a group of the low-headed, gray nut pines which the earliest
inhabitants of that country called pinons.

The Canyon of Pinon Pines has a pleasant outlook and lies open to the
sun. At the upper end there is no more room by the stream border than
will serve for a cattle trail; willows grow in it, choking the path
of the water; there are brown birches here and ropes of white clematis
tangled over thickets of brier rose.

Lo