Fairy Prince and Other Stories by Abbott

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FAIRY PRINCE AND OTHER STORIES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

OLD-DAD PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS RAINY WEEK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

FAIRY PRINCE

AND OTHER STORIES

ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT

AUTHOR OF "MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE," "RAINY WEEK," ETC.

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE

_All Rights Reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

PAGE

FAIRY PRINCE 1

THE GAME OF THE BE-WITCHMENTS 59

THE BLINDED LADY 111

THE GIFT OF THE PROBABLE PLACES 155

THE BOOK OF THE FUNNY SMELLS--AND EVERYTHING 195

THE LITTLE DOG WHO COULDN'T SLEEP 245

FAIRY PRINCE

In my father's house were many fancies. Always, for instance, on every Thanksgiving Day it was the custom in our family to _bud_ the Christmas tree.

Young Derry Willard came from Cuba. His father and our father had been chums together at college. None of us had ever seen him before. We were very much excited to have a strange young man invited for Thanksgiving dinner. My sister Rosalee was seventeen. My brother Carol was eleven. I myself was only nine, but with very tall legs.

Young Derry Willard was certainly excited when he saw the Christmas tree. Excited enough, I mean, to shift his eyes for at least three minutes from my sister Rosalee's face. Lovely as my sister Rosalee was, it had never yet occurred to any of us, I think, until just that moment that she was old enough to have perfectly strange young men stare at her so hard. It made my father rather nervous. He cut his hand on the carving-knife. Nothing ever made my mother nervous.

Except for father cutting his hand it seemed to be a very nourishing dinner. The tomato soup was pink with cream. The roast turkey didn't look a single sad bit like any one you'd seen before. There was plenty of hard-boiled egg with the spinach. The baked potatoes were frosted with red pepper. There was mince pie. There was apple pie. There was pumpkin pie. There were nuts and raisins. There were gay gold-paper bonbons. And everywhere all through the house the funny blunt smell of black coffee.

It was my brother Carol's duty always to bring in the Christmas tree. By some strange mix-up of what is and what isn't my brother Carol was dumb--stark dumb, I mean, and from birth. But tho he had never found his voice he had at least never lost his shining face. Even now at eleven in the twilightly end of a rainy Sunday, or most any day when he had an earache, he still let mother call him "Shining Face." But if any children called him "Shining Face" he kicked them. Even when he kicked people, tho, he couldn't stop his face shining. It was very cheerful. Everything about Carol was very cheerful. No matter, indeed, how much we might play and whisper about gifts and tinsels and jolly-colored candles, Christmas never, I think, seemed really _probable_ to any of us until that one jumpy moment, just at the end of the Thanksgiving dinner, when, heralded by a slam in the wood-shed, a hoppytyskip in the hall, the dining-room door flung widely open on Carol's eyes twinkling like a whole skyful of stars through the shaggy, dark branches of a young spruce-tree. It made young Derry Willard laugh right out loud.

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