“That’s to show you where I am,” came the clear voice.  “You ought to feel honoured.  I’ve only three cones left.”

The dike before which Bennington had paused was one of the round variety.  It rose perhaps twenty feet above the debris at its base, sheer, gray, its surface almost intact except for an insignificant number of frost fissures.  From its base the hill fell rapidly, so that, even from his own inferior elevation, he was enabled to look over the tops of trees standing but a few rods away from him.  He could see that the summit of this dike was probably nearly flat, and he surmised that, once up there, one would become master of a pretty enough little plateau on which to sit; but his careful circumvallation could discover no possible method of ascent.  The walls afforded no chance for a squirrel’s foothold even.  He began to doubt whether he had guessed aright as to the girl’s whereabouts, and began carefully to examine the tops of the trees.  Discovering nothing in them, he cast another puzzled glance at the top of the dike.  A pair of violet eyes was scrutinizing him gravely over the edge of it.

“How in the world did you get up there?” he cried.

“Flew,” she explained, with great succinctness.

“Look out you don’t fall,” he warned hastily; her attitude was alarming.

“I am lying flat,” said she, “and I can’t fall.”

“You haven’t told me how you got up.  I want to come up, too.”

“How do you know I want you?”

“I have such a lot of things to say!” cried Bennington, rather at a loss for a valid reason, but feeling the necessity keenly.

“Well, sit down and say them.  There’s a big flat rock just behind you.”

This did not suit him in the least.  “I wish you’d let me up,” he begged petulantly.  “I can’t say what I want from here.”

“I can hear you quite well.  You’ll have to talk from there, or else keep still.”

“That isn’t fair!” persisted the young man, adopting a tone of argument.  “You’re a girl——­”

“Stop there!  You are wrong to start with.  Did you think that a creature who could fly to the tops of the rocks was a mere girl?  Not at all.”

“What do you mean?” asked the easily bewildered Bennington.

“What I say.  I’m not a girl.”

“What are you then?”

“A sun fairy.”

“A sun fairy?”

“Yes; a real live one.  See that cloud over toward the sun?  The nice downy one, I mean.  That’s my couch.  I sleep on it all night.  I’ve got it near the sun so that it will warm up, you see.”

“I see,” cried Bennington.  He could recognise foolery—­provided it were ticketed plainly enough.  He sat down on the flat rock before indicated, and clasped his knee with his hands, prepared to enjoy more.  “Is that your throne up there, Sun Fairy?” he asked.  She had withdrawn her head from sight.

“It is,” her voice came down to him in grave tones.