futurity for the "good time coming," which so many spend their lives
in craving after and expecting, but which the proud, the selfish and
the idle never reach to.

The Fairies turned from her sorrowful and angry.

* * * * *

In the outskirts of a forest, just where its intricacy had broken away
into picturesque openings, leaving visible some strange old trees with
knotted trunks and mysteriously twisted branches, sat a young girl
sketching. She was intently engaged, but as her eyes were ever and
anon raised from her paper to the opening glade, and one of the old
trees, the Fairies had no difficulty in recognizing their protégée,
Hermione. The laughing face of childhood had become sobered and
refined by sentiment and strength, but contentment and even enjoyment
beamed in her eyes as she thoughtfully and earnestly pursued her
beautiful art. The little beings who hovered around her in that sweet
spot, almost forgot they were not in Fairy land; the air was so full
of sweet odours from ferns and mosses, and the many other delicious
scents you find so constantly in woods.

Besides which, it amused the good souls to watch Hermione's skilful
hand tracing the scene before her; and they felt an admiring delight
when they saw the old tree of the forest reappear on the paper, with
all the shadows and lights the sun just then threw upon it, and they
wondered not a little at the skill with which she gave distance and
perspective to the glade beyond. They felt, too, that though the
drawing they saw rising under the sketcher's hand was not made
powerful by brilliant effects or striking contrasts, it was