“Oh!” cried Lulu, “are you a fairy?”

“Yes,” replied the little creature, “I am the golden cornmeal fairy.  I have been shut up here for ever and ever so long, and I thought I would never get out.  But, since you have let me out, I will do anything in the world for you,” and she waved her golden wings, and sang a jolly, golden song about diamonds.

“Will you?” cried Lulu.  “Then please make my grandfather better, for he is very sick and has to take thirteen kinds of medicine.”

“I will make him well,” said the fairy, as she flew out of the box, “and it is very kind of you to ask that, instead of something for yourself.  Now, you make a nice hot poultice of this meal, which is magical, and put it on the back of his neck.

“Then you say this fairy word:  Bibbilybab-bilyboobily-bag,’ and see what happens.  But don’t tell your grandfather I am a fairy; in fact, say nothing to any one about it, for we fairies are going away for a time, but we may come back later.”  Then the golden fairy waved her wings and disappeared.

But Lulu did just as she had been told, even to saying that magical word, and, my gracious! if Grandfather Goosey-Gander didn’t get all well in a second, and he thanked Lulu very much.  She felt sorry about the fairy disappearing so suddenly, but you can’t always have fairies, you know.  Now, if you girls don’t lose your pink hair ribbon I’ll tell you to-morrow night about Jimmie and the black cow.

STORY XXVI

JIMMIE AND THE BLACK COW

Lulu Wibblewobble felt quite proud of having seen the golden fairy in the corn meal box.  In fact she was the only one of her family who saw a fairy for ever and ever so long after that, because the fairies happened to go away from that part of the country.

Of course, Lulu wondered how the tiny creature got into the meal box, and she wondered if she might tell Alice and Jimmie about having seen her, but she decided she had better not.

Now it was about a week after Lulu had taken Grandfather Goosey-Gander the hot tea and the cold potatoes, that something happened to Jimmie Wibblewobble.

It was one afternoon when he was on his way home from school, and he was all alone, for he had been kept in for missing his spelling lesson, and all the other children had gone on.  You see he couldn’t spell “vinegar.”  Of course that’s an easy word, I know, but Jimmie didn’t like sour things, and I suppose that’s why he missed vinegar.  He put the “x” and a “k” of the word in the wrong places.  Anyway he was kept in, and he had to write “ketchup” on his paper fifty times.

Well, after he was let out Jimmie started off through the woods and over the fields.  Pretty soon, right after he was passing along a deep, dark, dingly dell, which is a sort of little valley, with flowers and ferns growing in it, he heard a bell ring.  “Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!” went the bell.  At first Jimmie thought he was near a church, but just then the bell rang differently.