round it--I don't mean that, for a palace ought to
be open to the sun and wind, and stand high and brave, with weathercocks
glittering and flags flying; but on one side of every palace there must
be a wood. And there was a very grand wood indeed beside the palace of
the king who was going to be Daylight's father; such a grand wood, that
nobody yet had ever got to the other end of it. Near the house it was
kept very trim and nice, and it was free of brushwood for a long way in;
but by degrees it got wild, and it grew wilder, and wilder, and wilder,
until some said wild beasts at last did what they liked in it. The king
and his courtiers often hunted, however, and this kept the wild beasts
far away from the palace.

One glorious summer morning, when the wind and sun were out together,
when the vanes were flashing and the flags frolicking against the blue
sky, little Daylight made her appearance from somewhere--nobody could
tell where--a beautiful baby, with such bright eyes that she might have
come from the sun, only by and by she showed such lively ways that she
might equally well have come out of the wind. There was great jubilation
in the palace, for this was the first baby the queen had had, and there
is as much happiness over a new baby in a palace as in a cottage.

But there is one disadvantage of living near a wood: you do not know
quite who your neighbours may be. Everybody knew there were in it
several fairies, living within a few miles of the palace, who always had
had something to do with each new baby that came; for fairies live
so much longer than we, that they can have business with a good many
generations of human mortals. The curious houses they lived in were well
known also,--one, a hollow oak; another, a birch-tree, though nobody
could ever find how that fairy made a house of it; another, a hut of
growing trees intertwined, and patched up with turf and moss. But there
was another fairy who had lately come to the place, and nobody even knew
she was a fairy except the other fairies. A wicked old thing she was,
always concealing her power, and being as disagreeable as she could,
in order to tempt people to give her offence, that she might have the
pleasure of taking vengeance upon them. The people about thought she was
a witch, and those who knew her by sight were careful to avoid offending
her. She lived in a mud house, in a swampy part of the forest.

In all history we find that fairies give their remar