THE FAIRY WHO HAD
ONLY ONE WING
person who often sees fairies. Probably she would not have seen him if she had not been so sad and lonely.
"Why," she said, "it's a fairy! It is years since I saw a fairy. I thought I should never see one again."
When the fairy saw that Granny was glad to see him, he crept out of the rosebud and sat on her wrinkled hand, and talked to her.
"Poor little thing," said Granny, "you have lost one of your wings. Well, it was not likely that any but a one-winged fairy would find his way in here."
Then she sighed. So the fairy, to cheer her up, told her all about the lovely garden he had left behind him in the country—the garden where he had lived before the man with the scissors came to cut the rosebud. He told her about the other roses and the fairies that lived in them, and the tall hollyhocks whose fairies were so prim and old-fashioned, and the sweet, shy love-in-a-mist whose fairies always wore veils when they went out, and the sunflower-fairies who had never been taught that it was rude to stare, and the dear unselfish verbena fairies who made the world so sweet for other people and never thought of themselves. Then Granny remembered all sorts of things that she had forgotten for years—fairies she used to know when she was a little girl, and the stories they used to tell her. She told some of the stories to the rosebud fairy, and they talked together for a long time. Granny was happier that evening than she had been for a great many evenings. She said to herself that her birthday had been a very nice one after all.
"Won't you come and live with me?" she said.
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