Herself—­but not quite the same Toinette that she had been before.  Nobody changes from bad to better in a minute.  It takes time for that, time and effort, and a long struggle with evil habits and tempers.  But there is sometimes a certain minute or day in which people begin to change, and thus it was with Toinette.  The fairy lesson was not lost upon her.  She began to fight with herself, to watch her faults and try to conquer them.  It was hard work; often she felt discouraged, but she kept on.  Week after week and month after month she grew less selfish, kinder, more obliging than she used to be.  When she failed and her old fractious temper got the better of her, she was sorry and begged every one’s pardon so humbly that they could not but forgive.  The mother began to think that the elves really had bewitched her child.  As for the children they learned to love Toinette as never before, and came to her with all their pains and pleasures, as children should to a kind older sister.  Each fresh proof of this, every kiss from Jeanneton, every confidence from Marc, was a comfort to Toinette, for she never forgot Christmas Day, and felt that no trouble was too much to wipe out that unhappy recollection.  “I think they like me better than they did then,” she would say; but then the thought came, “Perhaps if I were invisible again, if they did not know I was there, I might hear something to make me feel as badly as I did that morning.”  These sad thoughts were part of the bitter fruit of the fairy fern-seed.

So with doubts and fears the year went by, and again it was Christmas Eve.  Toinette had been asleep some hours when she was roused by a sharp tapping at the window pane.  Startled, and only half awake, she sat up in bed and saw by the moonlight a tiny figure outside which she recognized.  It was Thistle drumming with his knuckles on the glass.

“Let me in,” cried the dry little voice.  So Toinette opened the casement, and Thistle flew in and perched as before on the coverlet.

“Merry Christmas, my girl.” he said, “and a Happy New Year when it comes.  I’ve brought you a present;” and, dipping into a pouch tied round his waist, he pulled out a handful of something brown.  Toinette knew what it was in a moment.

“Oh, no,” she cried shrinking back.  “Don’t give me any fern-seeds.  They frighten me.  I don’t like them.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Thistle, his voice sounding kind this time, and earnest.  “It wasn’t pleasant being invisible last year, but perhaps this year it will be.  Take my advice, and try it.  You’ll not be sorry.”

“Sha’n’t I?” said Toinette, brightening.  “Very well, then, I will.”  She leaned out of bed, and watched Thistle strew the fine dustlike grains in each shoe.

“I’ll drop in to-morrow night, and just see how you like it,” he said.  Then, with a nod, he was gone.

The old fear came back when she woke in the morning, and she tied on her shoes with a tremble at her heart.  Downstairs she stole.  The first thing she saw was a wooden ship standing on her plate.  Marc had made the ship, but Toinette had no idea it was for her.