they used to come out and play. And sometimes they worked, too, for I
can remember my father saying sometimes in the morning, "The floor
looks so clean that I think the brownies must have swept it last
night."

But, Grandfather, says WALTER, for there is one thing about this
that puzzles him, I'm a little boy, and I've never seen the brownies.

No, not yet, GRANDFATHER admits, but I think you're likely to any
time now. You see, they don't show themselves to very little boys, for
fear of frightening them.

GERTRUDE, who has been listening carefully to all of this, has a
question to ask. Grandmother, she says, did you see the brownies,
too, when you were a little girl?

No, indeed, answers GRANDMOTHER. The brownies never wanted any girls
to see them. But I used to see the house-fairies often, and they
always hid away from the boys, so that only we girls ever saw
them.

How many house-fairies were there, Grandmother, asks GERTRUDE
eagerly, and where did you see them, and what did they do?

My, what a lot of questions! GRANDMOTHER says, smiling at Gertrude's
excitement. There were two of them at our house, and they lived in
the kitchen just as the brownies did here. They used to hide in a big
clothes basket very much like that one over there. At night, like the
brownies, they used to do some of the house-work to help mother; and
how pleased she used to be, when she found in the morning that some of