CHAPTER VIL.
PETER PIPKINS AND FUNGUS THE FERRYMAN.

| AM so glad we didn’t go with the others,”
said Buttercup, as the two children walked
briskly along. “Oh, what a silly pair we'd
have been if we had got up at sunrise this
morning and begun to walk up those tire-
some steep hills. Now you see, Rose, who
was right? I always knew that I was the
wise one. It is much, much wiser to take
things quietly. I always do—I never excite myself.”

“Tt certainly is much nicer to walk down hill,’ said Rose,
“and that pretty violet lady must know the right way. But
what puzzles me is this: when we lived so close to the Rose
Mountains all our lives, why did we never notice them before?”

“Because we were silly, I suppose,” said Buttercup, in the
unconcerned sort of fashion in which he avoided any subject
which puzzled him. ‘The Rose Mountains are very pretty, are
they not, Primrose—much prettier than the Blue?”

“They are lovely, certainly,” replied Primrose; and they looked
so at this moment.

 

A. golden mist was all over them, and many shifting rainbow
sort of colours came and went along their summits, until it seemed
to the little girl’s excited fancy that she saw fairy people looking
at her and beckoning to her from the tops of the mountains.

The children walked on for a couple of hours. Then they
came to a small rustic cottage, at the door of which a very small
and wrinkled old man was standing. He had a long white beard,