and very dark and strange it looked in the evening. Dipping her little hands into the clear, crystal water, she drank, for she was thirsty. But she was too tired to appreciate any more beauty just then, and so she crept back to her little nest of flowers to go to sleep. Then she heard a gurgle of sweet silvery music, and she listened spellbound, entranced. But it was no wicked witch, seeking to entice her by spells: it was the solitary wood-thrush, that superb singer of the dusk. And then Fleuriss dropped off to sleep.
The next morning dawned fair, and she rose bewitched with what she had been through. The sunset and the silvery notes of the thrush all came back to her. She went down by the lake. It was very different now. Its blue was sparkling with the rays of the sun, whereas before it had looked very solitary—an icy cold blue. There was no beach—just a grassy bank—and in the shallow water she saw some little silvery fishes swimming and playing in shoals. And she watched them in their happy play for a long time, fascinated by the way they raced after each other around the shining stones and pebbles. Because they were no bright and gleaming, poor little Fleuriss thought that they were some rare and unheard-of fish, little dreaming that they were just common minnows.
