Wonderwings and other Fairy Stories | Page 2

Poppypink laughed with joy. "I am so glad, so very glad!" she said. "I had forgotten all about my wings."]
Lower she flew to help the little ones who cried about the gutters. She led the starving and shelterless to comfort, the toddlers to safety; she brought a flower to the hopeless, ease to sick ones racked with pain; at night she flew with glittering dreams from room to room, so that even sad-eyed feeble babies laughed for pleasure in their sleep. Day after day, night after night she toiled, for weeks and months and years. There was so much to do! The time passed like a moment. So busy was she that she had forgotten all about her wings.
One day there came a flash of colour in the air beside her, and Wonderwings and all the older fairies stood around her. "Dear Poppypink," cried one, "how your wings have grown! And how beautiful they are! They are so tall that they reach above your head and almost to the ground, and they glow with so many colours that it seems as if a million jewels had been flung upon them and had stuck, growing into a million flashing stars that make a million little rainbows with every sway and movement of your body."
Poppypink laughed with joy. "I am so glad, so very glad!" she said. "I had forgotten all about my wings."
"Yet they have grown with use," said Wonderwings; "and for every deed of kindness done a star has sprung, to shine in beauty there for evermore."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Queen-mother looked over the garden wall. There an old woman hobbled, muttering to herself.]

The Magic Mirror
There was once a wise old king in a far-off land who said to himself, "I have a daughter as well as a son; why should she not have a kingdom too? I will see to it at once."
He called the chief map-maker to him, and said: "Make a map of my kingdom and divide it by a line so evenly that each part shall be exactly half. There must not be one hair's breadth more on the east of the line than on the west."
The chief map-maker worked hard, and soon had the map ready, and it was divided so evenly that there was not a hair's breadth more on the east of the line than on the west. Then the king made a law that when he died the Prince should rule over all the country on one side of the line, and the Princess should rule over all the country on the other side. The Prince's land he called Eastroyal, and the Princess's land he called Westroyal, and from that day to this there have always been kings over Eastroyal and queens over Westroyal.
But it was soon noticed that in Eastroyal the people became discontented and quarrelsome and poor, and were always finding fault with the government; whereas in the west country over the border they were so happy and kindly that they praised each queen from the beginning of her reign to the end. Nobody knew why there should be so great a difference, but a great difference there was. Things grew worse and worse in Eastroyal, until at last the people rose and turned the reigning king off his throne and set his little son in his place. "Perhaps we shall be better satisfied now!" they said.
The new king's mother walked alone, deep in thought; and she was very troubled. "How can I teach my little son to please his people better than his father did?" she wondered. "It would break my heart if he too angered them and lost his crown, yet already he is showing a haughty temper in his treatment of his lords, and I know not what to do."
"I know! I know!" said a voice.
The Queen-mother was much startled; though she had not spoken aloud, the words seemed an answer to her thought. She looked over the low wall of the garden into the road. There an old woman hobbled, leaning on a stick, and muttering to herself. She was poor and ragged, and bent with age. "I know, I know!" she said again.
"What do you know?" asked the Queen-mother gently.
The old woman looked up at her. "Go to Westroyal," she said; and she hobbled away.
"Ah, a witch!" thought the Queen-mother; "and she is right. The Queens of the West have undoubtedly some secret means of making their people love them. I will find out what it is."
She prepared for a visit to Westroyal, and arrived a few days later at the palace of the reigning queen. Here she was welcomed and feasted and treated right lovingly, but though she kept her eyes and her ears as wide open as it was possible for eyes and ears to