are at the green square so hard that he scarcely
winked, but he heard the Counterpane Fairy counting on in her thin
little voice until she reached FORTY-NINE.

The green square spread and grew just as the yellow one had done while
she counted, until Teddy seemed drifting off into endless green spaces.
Then the Counterpane Fairy clapped her hands and he saw that he was
hovering over a grassy hillside.

"Now you are an elf, you know," he heard the fairy say.

At the bottom of the green hill there was a brook, and at the top was a
line of shady green woods. Overhead the sky was very blue, with shining
heaps of cottony white clouds; a soft wind was blowing, but the sun was
warm, and insects were buzzing past intent on business. A brown bird
whirred by and dropped out of sight among the grasses.

Teddy floated through the air lighter than a feather, and he felt so
happy that he clapped his hands together and turned head over heels in
the air. As he came right side up again he saw a bit of thistle-down
drifting on up the hill, and he was so little that when he flew after it
and set himself astride of it, it seemed as big as a barrel to him. He
floated on up the hill with it, and the wind was like a cushion behind
him.

As they reached the edge of the hill the thistle-down caught on a bush,
and Teddy almost has his leg wedged between it and a leaf. He jumped off
in a hurry, and stood looking about him and wondering what he should do
next.

Suddenly he saw something that made him open his eyes wide in
astonishment. Four large black-and-yellow butterflies were tied to
a knot on an old tree close by, but it was not at the butterflies
themselves that he wondered, for he had often seen them flitting about
the fields; it was at the way they were loaded down with the strangest
things: all sorts of fairy household furniture--little chairs and
tables, bedsteads, tiny pots and pans, a great soup-kettle almost as
large as a huckleberry, two thistle-down mattresses, and a number of
other things. All these were very neatly packed and tied between the
butterflies' wings with spider-web ropes.

In the middle of the knot was a hole, but instead of being round, as
a knot-hole generally is, it was square, and there was a little door
fitted into it.

Suddenly this door opened, and on the threshold of it stood a beautiful
little fairy. She stood there looking about, and then she drew from
her pocket a handkerchief, thin and delicate as