er very
much.

Then Fina shut her eyes, and there she was in the wood in Sussex--alone.

'Now, _have_ I dreamed it all?' she said, and went slowly home to tea.

The first thing she saw on the tea-table was the pagoda! And the next
was a brown-faced sailor eating hot buttered toast in the Windsor
armchair.

'Well may you look!' said Miss Patty; 'this is my brother Bob, newly
arrived from foreign parts. And he met that pedlar and bought the pagoda
off him for two pounds and a highly-coloured cockatoo he was bringing
home. And these ten sovereigns the wicked old man gave me are bad ones.
But the dresses and the cloth are good. It's a wonderful world!'

Fina thought so too.

Now, the oddest thing about all this is that six months later some new
people came to live in the house next door to the house where Fina lived
in Tooting. And those new people came from New Zealand. And one of them
was called Ella!

Fina knew her at once, but Ella had forgotten her, and forgotten the
beautiful perfect butler and the perfect footman, and the lamp and the
ring, and everything. Perhaps a long sea-voyage is bad for the memory.
Anyway, the two little girls are close friends, and Ella loves to hear
Fina tell the story of the two slaves, though she doesn't believe a word
of it.

Fina's father and Ella's father have left Tooting now. They live in
lovely houses at Haslemere. And Fina has a white pony and Ella has a
brown one. Their fathers are very rich now. They both got situations as
managers to branch houses of Messrs. Lamps, Rings, and Co., Electrical
Engineers. Mr. Lamps attends to the lighting department, and Mr. Rings
is at the head of the bells, which always ring beautifully. And I hear
that Ella's father and Fina's father are likely to be taken into
partnership. Mr. Bodlett has bought the pagoda, at Fina's earnest
request, and it stands on a sideboard in his handsome drawing-room.
Fina sometimes asks it whether she really did dream the whole story or
not. But it never says a word.

Of course, you and I know that every word of the story is true.

THE CHARMED LIFE; OR, THE PRINCESS AND THE LIFT-MAN

There was once a Prince whose father failed in business and lost
everything he had in the world--crown, kingdom, money, jewels, and
friends. This was because he was so fond of machinery that he was always
making working models of things he invented, and so had no time to
attend to the duties that Kings are engaged for.