“Do you ever have anything to do with witches?”

“Mark my words, ghosts and witches live only in the imagination of silly human beings.  We useful people scorn them.  Now imps might be said to belong to the same family were it not for the proofs we have of their existence.  They are everlastingly getting children into trouble by suggesting things to them they never would have thought of—­”

“Such as what?”

“Do you suppose I am going to tell you?  No, indeed; they can do it fast enough for themselves.  Persons who take too much wine are their most constant companions; they pounce upon them and twitch and tease and torment them until the poor wine-bibber trembles from head to foot.  They won’t let him sleep or eat or think, and fairly drive him crazy.  Oh, imps are really to be dreaded!  But I must now begin my second story.”

PAZ’S SECOND STORY

“There was to be a grand birthday festival among the Fays, who inhabit the tropics.  The wind fairies had brought us news of it as well as urgent invitations for our royal family to be present; but so deeply engrossed was our King at that moment in supplying the oil wells of Pennsylvania with petroleum that he could not absent himself.  The Queen never goes from home without her liege lord.

“The princes and princesses were all too young, and could not be allowed to leave their lessons; so the regrets were inscribed on lotus leaves, and sent by special messenger—­a bird of the Cypselina family.  He was a great sooty-black fellow, with a tinge of green in his feathers, strong, well able to fly, as his family generally do from America to Asia.  But the gift could not be intrusted to him.  I was chosen as bearer of that.

“Much discussion had taken place as to what this gift should be.  It was desirable that nothing ordinary should be offered, for the Fays are, as a rule, fastidious.  Gems they possess in abundance.  Flowers are so common that their beds are made of them.  Their books are ’the running brooks,’ and their art treasures hang on every bough.  The Queen had woven a veil of lace with her own fingers; it was filmy and exquisite, but my heart sank within me when she declared that nothing less than a wreath of snow-flakes must accompany it.  To obtain this wreath and carry it to the Fays as a birthday gift was to be my duty.

“How should I accomplish it?  I dared not suggest the difficulties, for at once I should have been displaced, and another elf chosen for the performance of this arduous task.  Besides, if it could be accomplished by any one, I must be that person, having always been unwilling ever to allow difficulties to deter me from any duty.  Pride of the right sort is a great help.  I went to the frost-workers and told them what I wanted.  They said they could imitate any flower; but the Queen had expressly said that the wreath must be of snow-flakes.  Now the fantastic impulse of a snow-storm is well known, but it is not so generally known that there is a scientific accuracy even in the formation of snow-flakes.”