occasions when she chanced to be alone. Just now she was very happy.
The weather was mild. All snow had vanished beneath the warm rays of
the sun, and she ran out to know if it were really as warm as it looked.
The tall evergreen trees and hedges shone dark against the sky, and
Sprite stood looking at them. She had taken part in a little play on
the week before, and some of the lines now flitted through her mind,
and she lifted her pretty arms in graceful gesture. With the dark trees
and low shrubbery behind her, she recited the lines with appropriate
gesture, and telling effect.

Six small girls had taken part in the little play, and each had been
chosen by Miss Kenyon, because of her talent for speaking. Sprite,
with her long, golden hair, and her slender figure, had been cast for
the fairy queen, whose delight it was to grant the wishes of all good
children.

Now she stepped out into an open space, the beautiful garden making
a lovely background for her figure. Gracefully she stood as she recited
a verse that had been a part of the fairy play.

"If you're striving to excel,
And your very best you do,
You shall be rewarded well;
I will make your wish come true."

A dark figure crouched behind a clump of underbrush that the gardener
had thought too pretty to cut down.

Through snow and ice the red leaves had clung to the little scrub oak,
and now that a mild day had come, the leaves looked very bright as the