they seemed to be thicker and to hide the sky more by night
than they did by day. In the winter it was different. Then there were
no leaves, but only branches and twigs, which covered the sky like
lace work, and through these Kathleen sometimes thought that she could
see a star or two in the water, but she was seldom quite sure. Yet she
never passed the place without looking in it, to see the green leaves
and the blue sky or the black leaves and the almost black sky, or the
stars, if she could find any.

* * * * *

On a certain day--the last day of April it was--there was a good deal
of excitement in the fairy palace under the hill. The reason of it was
that a new fairy had come to live there. Perhaps you never heard of a
baby fairy. I have read a good many stories about fairies that said
nothing about any such thing. Now, you needn't try to be so bright
about it and say that of course there must be baby fairies, or there
could not be any grown-up fairies. That isn't so at all. Fairies are
not like men about growing old and dying and other fairies taking
their places. I have heard of a fairy funeral, but I can't imagine how
it happened, and I think that the story about it must have been a
mistake. If you have read this book as far as here, you know that most
fairies are thousands of years old, and you know, too--for Naggeneen
has told you--what is likely to become of them in the end. Still,
there is no sort of doubt that now and then a new fairy is born, and
there was one born on this day. He was the son of the King and the
Queen, and you can guess well enough that a fairy prince is a person
of some consequence.

"What will we do at all for a nurse for the baby?" said the Queen.

"What will we do at all?" said the King.

"It never would do for me to have the care of him at the first," said
the Queen.

"Never a bit," said the King; "it would ruin him."

"How would it ruin him?" said the Queen.

"Never a know I know, no more nor you," said the King, "but you know
as well as I it would ruin him."

"Why can't I care for my own child?" said the Queen, "the same as a
human mother does?"

"I dunno," said the King, "only we know you can't. We've never dared
try, to see what would happen. He must have a human nurse. Maybe it's
something to do with them things Naggeneen was always talking about
our having no souls--"

"Don't be talking about Naggeneen," said the Queen, "and me not wel