But the children had been playing hard all day, and their bodies were
tired. "Oh, tell us a story instead of playing," begged Ivra. "This is
the time when mother tells her very best stories."

"Well, I am not mother," said the Beautiful Wicked Witch; "but I will
tell you the best stories I can. Come sit near the window where the
light is stronger. That fire will never burn while I am here. I am
brighter than it, and the old thing is jealous."

The children laughed at her joke. But it was true,--she was very bright.
Her eyes seemed to light the room, or perhaps it was her gown, like an
opal fire, blue and pink and purple, changing and glowing, and made of
the softest silk.

Ivra nestled close to her knee where she could stroke the gleaming silk.
Eric sprawled on the floor at her feet, his face upturned to hers.

Then she told them a story. It was not like any of Helma's World
Stories, but the children liked it. It was all about a gorgeous bird she
had at home in her tree-house. She told how she had heard it singing one
morning in early spring, high up in the branches of her tree, and how
she had watched it day after day flying back and forth in the forest,
its yellow breast flashing among the green leaves. It had a long golden
bill, and its tail was black as jet; and its wings were the softest gray
in the world with a feather of jet in either one. Its song was the
clearest, the highest, the purest of all the bird songs in the forest.
It was a wonderful bird, and she wanted it for her own.

Then she told the children how she had set traps for it, and how it had
escaped every time. But at last she had made a dear little cage, all