“We tried having dories made of the same material of those candy marbles that nothing but time and long-enduring patience will ever make an end of.  But the fellows had such a habit, as they floated down the stream, of eating up the oars, we had to give it up—­”

“Will,” said Tot’s mamma, at the open door, “are you ready?  Run away to Ellen, Tot, and be a good little girl.”

Tot descended from her throne, slowly and unwillingly, and, going obediently away, never knew about the beautiful river fairy just then springing to life, like Minerva in the brain of Jove, in Will’s fancy, purposely to make Tot’s acquaintance.

With glistening wonder in her eyes, in robe of trailing, snowy, sun-shot mist, with water lilies dropping from her hair, and the cave—­Will could have provided for her such a cave, the water tinkling and trickling from the walls hung with silver spray, stalactites of purest barley sugar glittering, pillars of creamiest cream candy shimmering; and, to crown all and above all, the fairy would have had a daily diet of cream cakes and caramels.

But, before all this splendor of material could be built up into words, the builder had departed, the river fairy had melted back and away into her native mist, and Tot never knew.

That night, Will tossed Tot flying once more into the air, rescued once more his fresh collar from her crumpling embrace, kissed her once more, good-by this time, and was off and away on the cars to school.  No more stories.  No more fairies.  No more anything.  Only a wonderful river winding and gleaming and leaping through Tot’s childish dreams—­beautiful, wonderful “Soogar Wiver,” where happy Uncle Will went fishing, lying on the bed of rock candy.

One morning, all in the gray and quiet, Tot had a queer dream.  She thought some one said, with a funny little catch in the voice:  “Wake up, little Tot, mamma’s treasure,” and some one held her so tightly she could hardly breathe.  And she opened her eyes and shut them again, quite dazzled; but she thought she saw papa and mamma standing beside her bed, and the room was all on fire it was so bright to two, poor, sleepy, baby eyes, and papa’s voice seemed to say, a great way off: 

“Poor, little, sleepy Tot.”

It was such a queer dream, but not half so queer as what followed; for, after a while, she woke up and went right on dreaming just the same.  That was very strange.  How could it be anything else than a dream, to be taken up by gaslight and dressed all in her little street coat and hat before breakfast, to be made to drink milk and eat when she wasn’t hungry, to be petted and cried over and half crushed in mamma’s arms, to be taken by papa out into the cool, clear dawning, with the sky just beginning to flush like a sea shell and a waking bird or two to twitter about getting up, to be put into a coach that rolled and rumbled, to be put into something else that rolled and rumbled a thousand times worse; nothing had ever happened anything like this in any of Tot’s waking hours before.