‘IO Lily and Water-Lily.

 

to get to this place, where he saw that the flowers
were finest, and sometimes the water had been less
shallow and stronger than he had expected ; and now
that he was here somehow he could not get the lilies—
they eluded him. He was beginning to lose patience ;
he did not want to wade far into this portion of the
stream ; for he knew that the current was very swift
just here and the water deep, but he would not go
without the lilies, no, not even without these particular
lilies that he had marked for his own.

He had forgotten all about the fairies in his
eagerness over the quest, in his resolution not to be
daunted, and his unreasonable vexation against the
lovely wayward things that floated away from him
on the bosom of the stream as soon as his hand
seemed to hold them, made him more determined
than ever to secure them. They seemed to laugh at
him with their bright white faces; it was a fancy, of
course, but it irritated him. And as he waded a
space into the water and stooped down, stretching
out his hand towards them once more, the moon