THE FAIRY LOOKING FOR A HOME
from that ugly room. It seemed as though the far-ofF fields and the glory of the sun had been really brought there, to the tired men who sat listening. And to each man as he listened came a dream of the thing he loved best. To one man the room seemed to have turned into a garden; the scent of a thousand roses was in the air, and the colours of a thousand flowers. Another man thought he was in a field, lying under a tree and looking at the pattern of the leaves against the sky. And another saw the sunshine sparkling on the dear sea, and the little ripples running races on the sand. But the Man in the Thin Coat saw more things than any of them.
And while they were all listening to the beautiful poem about the summer, little Fairy Flitterwing slipped out of the ink-pot and flew off to play with a sunbeam on the window-sill. The sunbeam showed him a very comfortable scarlet geranium that was growing in a window not far off, so Flitterwing went to live in it, and found a safe home at last.
And the Man in the Thin Coat went back to his sums. He was happier than he had ever been before, because he had written a beautiful poem. He was never able to write any more poetry, and he thought this was rather odd until, years afterwards, his little daughter guessed the truth. He had just finished reading to her his poem about the summer.
"Why, Daddy," she said, "there must have been a fairy in your ink-pot when you wrote that!"
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