THE COUNTERPANE FAIRY.
T was Sunday afternoon, and everything was very still.
Teddy had been allowed to sit up that morning for the first time since he had been ill. He had put on the little blue dressing-gown that mamma had made for him, and she was so funny about getting him into it, and wheeling the chair over to the window, that Teddy had laughed and laughed.
After that he sat at the window looking out and watching the chickens in the yard below, and the people going along the street.
Teddy's mamma was going to church, but his father stayed home with the little boy, and told him stories, and drew pictures with a blue pencil on a writing-pad; pictures of "David Killing Goliath," and of "Daniel in the Lions' Den."
Then he drew a picture of the house in the real country where he and mamma and Teddy were going to live some time --a house with a barn, and horses, and cows, and pigs, and a pony that Teddy could ride when he came in to town to school.
The morning flew by so quickly that the little boy was surprised when mamma came back from church, and said it was almost time for luncheon.
She looked at the pictures that papa had drawn, and smiled when Teddy told her about them; but very soon she began to talk seriously with papa. She told him she had stopped in at Mrs. McFinney's on her way home, and that she had been wondering whether something couldn't be done for little Ellen McFinney's lameness. She felt so sorry for her.
Papa said the child ought to be sent to a hospital, and he thought that if that were done she could be cured. Mamma said that she thought so too; but that someone had been talking to little Ellen, and frightened her so that she cried whenever the hospital was talked of, and her mother would not send her unless she felt willing to go.
Then mamma spoke of how lonely it must be for the little girl there in the house by herself all the day, while her mother was out at work, with so little to amuse her.
"Mamma," said Teddy, "why can't little Ellen have some of my books to amuse her-- some I had when I was sick? Because, you know, I'm well now, and don't need them any more."
"That's a very good idea," said mamma, looking pleased. "You may choose the ones you will give her, and perhaps papa will leave them with her when he goes out for a walk this afternoon."
"Well," cried Teddy, eagerly, "I think I'll give her the Ali Baba book and Robinson Crusoe, and I think, maybe, I'll give her Little Golden Locks too."
Mamma brought the books, and they tied them up in a neat package, and just as they finished there was a little rattle of china outside the door, and in came Hannah with Teddy's luncheon, and a great yellow orange that Aunt Pauline had sent him.
After luncheon mamma made Teddy lie down for a while to rest. The Venetian shutters were drawn, so that all the room was dimly green, and then mamma and papa went out and left him alone.
Teddy lay there for what seemed to him a long time. The house was very still, and the afternoon sun shone in through the slats of the shutters in golden chinks and lines.
Teddy wondered where mamma was, and why she didn't come back, for it seemed to him that he had been alone almost all the afternoon, though really it had not been for long.
Presently he heard someone humming cheerfully back of the counterpane hill, and as soon as he heard it he felt sure that the Counterpane Fairy must be coming.
Sure enough in a few minutes she appeared at the top and stood looking down at him with a pleasant smile. "Oh, Mrs. Fairy, I knew that was you!" cried Teddy.
"Did you?" said the fairy, sitting down on top of his knees. "And then did you think, 'Now I shall see another story'?"
"Oh, yes!" cried Teddy, eagerly. "I hoped you would show me one."
"Then I suppose I'll have to," said the fairy. "And what square shall it be this time?"
"There's one close by you," said Teddy, "and it's most every color, like a rainbow. Will you show me that story?"
"Yes," said the fairy, "I'll show you that. Now fix your eyes on it." Then she began to count.
"FORTY-NINE!" she cried.
Teddy and little Ellen McFinney were running along, hand in hand, over a rainbow that stretched across the shining sky like a bridge. The clouds above them shone like opals, and far, far below was the green world, with shining rivers, and houses that looked no larger than walnuts.
"Can't we run fast?" said Teddy. "I think we go as fast as an express train; don't you, Ellen?"
"I know a faster way to go than this," said the little girl.
"Do you?"
"Yes, I do. Let go of my hand, and I'll show you." She drew her hand away from Teddy, and very slowly she leaned back against the air as though it were a pillow, then she gave herself a little push with her feet, and away she floated so lightly and easily that Teddy could hardly keep up with her.
"Oh, Ellen!" cried Teddy, "will you teach me to do that?"
"Yes, I will," said Ellen. So she stood up and showed Teddy how to take a long breath, and how to push himself, and then he found he could do it quite well, and when Ellen began to float too, they could go along together hand in hand just as they had before.
Suddenly a thought crossed Teddy's mind, and he cried, "Why, Ellen, I thought you were lame!"
"So I am," said the little girl.
"But you can run and float."
"Yes, I know, but that's because I'm dreaming."
"Why, no, Ellen, you can't be dreaming," said Teddy, "for I'm here too."
"Well, I don't know," said Ellen, "but I think I'm dreaming, because I've often dreamed this way before."
Teddy thought of this for a little while, but it was not pleasant to think that he was in a dream. After a while he said: "Ellen, don't you know, if you're lame you ought to go to a hospital? My mamma says so, and my papa says so too."
An ugly expression came into Ellen's face. "That's all you know about it," she cried. "You don't catch me going to a hospital. Why, I heard of a girl that went to a hospital and--"
She was interrupted by a soft burst of laughter, and looking about Teddy saw that he and she had floated right into midst of a group of little children, who were running along the rainbow bridge. They were all such pretty little children, with soft shining faces and bare feet, but they did not quite look like any children that Teddy had ever seen before.
Each little child carried in its hand a bunch of flowers, and they were such flowers as the little boy had never dreamed of. Some of them moved on their stalks, opening and closing their petals softly like the wings of butterflies, some shone like jewels, and some seemed to change and throb as if with a hidden pulse of life.
Ellen, who had stopped floating, caught Teddy by the coat and hung back timidly when she saw the children, but Teddy spoke to the one nearest to him. "Where did you get your flowers?" he asked.
"From the garden at the other end of the rainbow," said the little child, smiling at him.
"Give me one?"
"Oh, no, I can't!" answered the child, staring at him with big eyes. "They're for someone else."
"Whom are they for?"
"You can come along and see."
"Oh, say," whispered Ellen to Teddy, "let's go back!" But Teddy answered: "No, no! Come on and see where they're going." So Ellen reluctantly followed him, and they joined the other little children journeying along the rainbow.
The strange little children seemed very happy, and they laughed and talked together in their soft, clear voices, though Teddy could not always understand what they said. He could understand best the little boy to whom he had spoken first. Teddy asked him again where they were going, and this time the little boy (he seemed to be the captain of the band) told him that they were going down to the earth. He said that every week they had a holiday, and then they crossed the rainbow bridge, and carried the flowers from their flower-beds down to the little earth children.
"But what little children?" asked Teddy, curiously.
"Oh, you'll see!" answered the little boy, laughing, and then he began to talk with the others, and Teddy could no longer understand him.
It was not long after this that Teddy saw before him the end of the rainbow, and where should it go but right through the window of a great square yellow house, set back of a high wall and in the middle of a lawn.
"Oh dear! we can't get to the end of it after all," cried Teddy, and the next thing he knew the little children were walking through the window just as if nothing were there, and he and Ellen were following them.
"Where are we?" asked Ellen, looking about her, half frightened and yet curious.
"I can't think," said Teddy. "Seems as if I knew, but I can't think."
They were in a long, bare, clean room, and on each side of it were rows of little white beds, and in each bed lay or sat a little child. A few of the children were asleep, most of them were awake, but all looked pale and thin. Here and there at the sides of the beds grown-up people were sitting, sometimes showing the children pictures or books, and sometimes reading to them.
The children from the rainbow walked slowly up the aisle between the row of beds, and, strangely enough, no one seemed to look at them or pay the least attention, any more than if they had not been there, and at last Teddy began to believe that they could not see them.
Often the little strange children stopped to smooth a pillow or to softly stroke the cheek or hand of one of the little earth children.
Here and there one would linger behind the others, by some bed, and after a moment would lay its bunch of flowers on the pillow. Then the little child in the bed would turn its head and smile, even if it were asleep, and its face would shine as if with some inward happiness. The whole room seemed filled with the perfume of flowers, and Teddy wondered that no one paid any attention to it.
At last they came to a bed where a little child was lying fast asleep, and a woman was sitting beside the child and fanning it. Suddenly its eyes opened, and the moment they turned toward the rainbow children, Teddy knew that it saw them.
It lay looking for a moment and then it smiled and feebly tried to wave its hand. "What is it, dear?" asked the woman, bending over the child, but it paid no attention to her, for it was gazing at the rainbow children.
"Oh, he sees us! he sees us!" they cried, clapping their hands joyfully. "He'll be coming across the rainbow soon."
Then the rainbow children gathered about the bed and began talking to the child, but Teddy could not understand what they said to it. The little child on the bed seemed to understand them though, and it smiled and tried to nod its head.
"Come soon! Come soon!" cried the little children, waving their hands to it as they moved away, and the eyes of the child on the bed followed them wistfully, as though it were eager to follow.
Teddy and Ellen still went with the other little children, and a moment after they were out on the rainbow bridge again, high up above the world, but they were alone, for the little strange children were gone.
Ellen stood still and drew a long breath. "Oh! wasn't that lovely?" she sighed. "I wonder where it was!"
"I know where it was!" cried Teddy suddenly. "I remember now, for I saw a picture of it in one of papa's magazines. That was a hospital, Ellen."
"A hospital!" cried the little girl.
"Yes, a hospital."
Ellen did not say anything for some time, but at last she drew another deep breath. "Well, if that's a hospital I shouldn't mind going to a place like that," she said.
The rainbow had faded away, and Teddy was back in the great high-post bedstead again, with the silk coverlet drawn up over his knees, and the Counterpane Fairy still sitting on top of the hill. Teddy lay looking at her for a while in silence. "Mrs. Fairy, was that a true story like the others?" he asked her at last.
"How should I know?" asked the fairy. "Do I look as though I knew anything about rainbow children? You'd better ask Ellen McFinney; maybe she can tell you."
"Well, I will," said Teddy. "I mean to ask her just as soon as ever I'm well."
He did not have to wait for that, however, for the very next day his mother told him that little Ellen had at last consented to be taken to the hospital, and that perhaps when he saw the little girl again she would be able to walk and run about almost like other children.
