"Now you are an elf, you know," he heard the fairy say.

At the bottom of the green hill there was a brook, and at the top was a
line of shady green woods. Overhead the sky was very blue, with shining
heaps of cottony white clouds; a soft wind was blowing, but the sun was
warm, and insects were buzzing past intent on business. A brown bird
whirred by and dropped out of sight among the grasses.

Teddy floated through the air lighter than a feather, and he felt so
happy that he clapped his hands together and turned head over heels in
the air. As he came right side up again he saw a bit of thistle-down
drifting on up the hill, and he was so little that when he flew after it
and set himself astride of it, it seemed as big as a barrel to him. He
floated on up the hill with it, and the wind was like a cushion behind
him.

As they reached the edge of the hill the thistle-down caught on a bush,
and Teddy almost has his leg wedged between it and a leaf. He jumped off
in a hurry, and stood looking about him and wondering what he should do
next.

Suddenly he saw something that made him open his eyes wide in
astonishment. Four large black-and-yellow butterflies were tied to a
knot on an old tree close by, but it was not at the butterflies
themselves that he wondered, for he had often seen them flitting about
the fields; it was at the way they were loaded down with the strangest
things: all sorts of fairy household furniture--little chairs and
tables, bedsteads, tiny pots and pans, a great soup-kettle almost as
large as a huckleberry, two thistle-down mattresses, and a number of