and promised that if she ever passed through
their town she would pay them a visit. Then she rode off into the wide
world. But Kay and Gerda walked on, hand in hand, and wherever they went
they found the most delightful spring and blooming flowers. Soon they
recognised the big town where they lived, with its tall towers, in which
the bells still rang their merry peals. They went straight on to
grandmother's door, up the stairs and into her room. Everything was just
as they had left it, and the old clock ticked in the corner, and the
hands pointed to the time. As they went through the door into the room
they perceived that they were grown up. The roses clustered round the
open window, and there stood their two little chairs. Kay and Gerda sat
down upon them, still holding each other by the hand. All the cold empty
grandeur of the Snow Queen's palace had passed from their memory like a
bad dream. Grandmother sat in God's warm sunshine reading from her
Bible.

'Without ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven.'

Kay and Gerda looked into each other's eyes, and then all at once the
meaning of the old hymn came to them.

'Where roses deck the flowery vale,
There, Infant Jesus, we thee hail!'

And there they both sat, grown up and yet children, children at heart;
and it was summer--warm, beautiful summer.

THE NIGHTINGALE

[Illustration: _Among these trees lived a nightingale, which sang so
deliciously, that even the poor fisherman, who had plenty of other
things to do, lay still to listen to it, when he was out at night
drawing in his nets._]

In China, as you know, the Emperor is a Chinaman, and all the people
around him are Chinamen too. It is many years since the story I am going
to tell you happened, but that is all the more reason for telling it,
lest it should be forgotten. The emperor's palace was the most beautiful
thing in the world; it was made entirely of the finest porcelain, very
costly, but at the same time so fragile that it could only be touched
with the very greatest care. There were the most extraordinary flowers
to be seen in the garden; the most beautiful ones had little silver
bells tied to them, which tinkled perpetually, so that one should not
pass the flowers without looking at them. Every little detail in the
garden had been most carefully thought out, and it was so big, that even
the gardener himself did not know where it ended. If one went on
w