CHAP. XXIV.—TOM READS ARCHIE’S STORY.

9 N the time when fairies still lived in the
A world, there were four children in a cer-
tain village very anxious to see them. They
had looked out for them constantly all through
the summer and winter days, in all kinds of
fairy-like places, walking on tiptoe so as not
to frighten them away, and yet they had
never even come across one of their houses,
far less a fairy himself. At length they went
to Ralph, the schoolmaster’s son, who knew
a great deal, but spoke little, and never told
what he knew. He had never really said
that he had seen the fairies, still they were
perfectly certain he had. He listened care-
fully to what they told him, and then he sat
quite quiet a minute thinking.