painting in oil

near me; it stood soon at my knee. I never spoke to it, and it never
spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and
our speechless colloquy was to this effect-
'It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand
was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a
lonely place- such as the moon, for instance- and it nodded its head
towards her horn, rising over Hayhill: it told me of the alabaster
cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to
go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.
'"Oh," returned the fairy, "that does not signify! Here is a
talisman will remove all difficulties"; and she held out a pretty gold
ring. "Put it," she said, "on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I
am yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own
heaven yonder." She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adele, is in
my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon
to change it to a ring again.'
'But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don't care for the
fairy: you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?'
'Mademoiselle is a fairy,' he said, whispering mysteriously.
Whereupon I told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part,
evinced a fund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr.