If one could always hold one’s tongue as to what one sees, one would be the better for it.  They are the wise people of this world who keep silence as to what they see; many such there are who behold things such as neither you nor I may ever hope to look upon, and yet we know nothing of this because they say nothing of it, going their own ways like common folks, and as though they saw nothing in an egg but the meat.

Dame Margery Twist of Tavistock town was not one of these wise folks who hold their tongues; she was a good, gossiping, chattering old soul, whose hen never hatched a chick but all of the neighbors knew of it, as the saying goes.  The poor old creature had only one eye; how she lost the other you shall presently hear, and also how her wonderful tulip garden became like anybody else’s tulip garden.

Dame Margery Twist lived all alone with a great tabby cat.  She dwelt in a little cottage that stood back from the road, and just across the way from the butcher’s shop.  All within was as neat and as bright as a new pin, so that it was a delight just to look upon the row of blue dishes upon the dresser, the pewter pipkins as bright as silver, or the sanded floor, as clean as your mother’s table.  Over the cottage twined sweet woodbines, so that the air was ladened with their fragrance in the summer-time, when the busy, yellow-legged bees droned amid the blossoms from the two hives that stood along against the wall.  But the wonder of the garden was the tulip bed, for there were no tulips in all England like them, and folks came from far and near, only to look upon them and to smell their fragrance.  They stood in double rows, and were of all colors—­white, yellow, red, purple, and pied.  They bloomed early, and lasted later than any others, and, when they were in flower, all the air was filled with their perfume.

Now all of these things happened before the smoke of the factories and the rattling of the steam-cars had driven the fairy folks away from this world into No-man’s-land, and this was the secret of the dame’s fine tulip bed.  For the fairies dwelt among the flowers, and she often told her gossips how that she could hear the fairy mothers singing their babies to sleep at night, when the moon was full and the evening was warm.  She had never seen the little folks herself, for few folks are given to look upon them, and Dame Margery’s eyes were not of that nature.  Nevertheless, she heard them, and that, in my opinion, is the next best thing to seeing them.

Dame Margery Twist, as I said, was a good, kind, comfortable old soul, and was, moreover, the best nurse in all of Tavistock town.  Was any one ill, it was Dame Margery who was called upon to attend him; as for the dame herself, she was always ready to bring a sick body into good health again, and was always paid well for the nursing.

[Illustration:  Dame Twist Drinketh tea]

One evening the dame was drinking her tea by herself with great comfort.  It was just at the dusking of the twilight; the latticed window was opened, so that the little breezes came rushing into the room, or stayed a while to play wantonly with the white linen curtains.  The tabby cat was purring in the door-way, and the dame was enjoying the sweetness of the summer-time.  There came a knock at the door, “Who is it?” said Dame Margery.