“Do you, indeed, mamma?” whispered poor Ruth, still without looking up; “well, then, I will tell you.  That flower was given me by a fairy to make me remember my promises to you, my poor, dear, dead mamma; and so long as I water that every day at the same hour, so long I shall be growing better and better, and my poor dear mamma,—­boo-hoo! boo-hoo!” and the little thing began to cry as if she would break her heart.

“Why, this is stranger than all,” said the father.  “I can’t help thinking the poor child would be rational enough now, if she hadn’t read so many fairy-books; but what a mercy it was, my dear Sarah, and how shall we ever be thankful enough, that you happened to be down there when she fell into the water.”

“Ah!” Ruth Page began to hold her breath, and listen with the strangest feeling.

“Yes, Robert; but I declare to you, I am frightened whenever I think of the risk I ran by letting her fall in, head first, as I did.”

Poor Ruth began to lift her head, and to feel about, and pinch herself to see if she was really awake.

“And then, too, just think of this terrible fever, and the strange, wild poetry she has been talking, day after day, about Fairy-land.”

“Poetry!  Fudge, Robert, fudge!”

Ruth looked up, full of amazement and joy, and whispered, “Fudge, father, fudge!” and the very next words that fell from her trembling lips as she sat looking at her mother, and pointing at a little bunch of forget-me-nots in full flower, that her mother had kept for her in a glass by the window, were these, “O mother! dearest mother! what a terrible dream I have had!”

“Hush, my love, hush! and go to sleep, and we will talk this matter over when you are able to bear it.”

“Goody gracious, mamma!”

“There she goes again!” cried the father; “now we shall have another fit!”

“Hush, hush, my love! you must go to sleep now, and not talk any more.”

“Well, kiss me, mamma, and let me have your hand to go to sleep with, and I’ll try.”

Her mother kissed the dear little thing, and took her hand in hers, and laid her cheek upon the pillow, and in less than five minutes she was sound asleep, and breathing as she hadn’t breathed before since she had been fished out of the water, nearly three weeks back, on her way to Fairy-land.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A FADED LEAF OF HISTORY.

BY REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

One quiet, snowy afternoon this winter, I found in a dark corner of one of the oldest libraries in the country a curious pamphlet.  It fell into my hands like a bit of old age and darkness itself.  The pages were coffee-colored, and worn thin and ragged at the edges, like rotting leaves in fall; they had grown clammy to the touch, too, from the grasp of so many dead years.  There was a peculiar smell about the book which it had carried down from the days when young William Penn went up and down the clay-paths of his village of Philadelphia, stopping to watch the settlers fishing in the clear ponds or to speak to the gangs of yellow-painted Indians coming in with peltry from the adjacent forest.