'I will tell you a few things,' said the fairy, 'though you would not understand if I tried to tell you all. We have charge of the zephyrs and the breezes. We send them out on their errands, and we have to see that each does its appointed task.'

'Oh,' interrupted Leonore, 'is this the home of the Four Winds?--is this the place where they start from, and meet again and make all their plans?'

The fairy shook her head.

'No,' she replied, 'the Four Winds are not fairies, they are spirits, and above us all; it is only the little winds, so to say--which are to the great ones like the little brooks compared to the great ocean--over whom we have authority. And,' she added more lightly, 'they are troublesome enough sometimes, I a.s.sure you--mischievous little imps--though they can be very sweet too, and seldom do real harm, and indeed, as a rule, a great deal of good. But for them your world would be dull and dreary.'

'Yes,' said Leonore, 'I should not like to live where everything was always quite still. And the little breezes are kind, aren't they? When it is very hot, it is lovely to feel one of them softly blowing round your face.'

'They are kind and tender too,' said the fairy; 'some of the gentlest among them are specially employed in refreshing poor sick people in their hot stifling rooms. They wait outside the windows patiently till they get a chance of entering. Then some of them spend most of their time in playing with little children, filling the sails of their tiny boats, or flying their kites and shuttlec.o.c.ks for them.' While talking thus, the fairy had led them onwards. But now she stopped in front again of another silver gate.

'Inside here,' she said, 'is one of the nurseries of the little clouds; we let them out every now and then for a race. Would you like to see them? It is prettiest perhaps by moonlight, but I must not keep you here till night.'

She opened the gate, and out flew a crowd of feathery forms, dancing, leaping, tumbling over each other in their hurry to escape; then at a sign from the fairy, off they flew, upwards, a dozen or more together, in a whirl and flutter.

You can scarcely imagine anything prettier than it was.

They flew so high that for a minute or two they were out of sight, then back they came again, some much in advance of the others, till the first one who had gained the race floated down to the fairy's feet, taking shape as it did so till it grew into the shadowy form of a little cherub, smiling up with its sky-blue eyes for its reward.

'Well done,' said the fairy. 'Now off you can go, all of you, for an hour or two; some little streams are very thirsty to-day, I hear, and will be glad to see you.'

And at once the whole feathery troop disappeared. The children turned to the fairy with smiling delight.

'How pretty and good they are,' said Hildegarde. 'I shall always think of you when I see the little clouds scudding across the sky--I have often thought they looked so alive. Do you never come down to our world yourself, fairy?'

'Oh yes,' she replied, 'we have to keep all the wind instruments in order. Some we bring back with us here to repair, in the middle of the night, so that n.o.body misses them; but some we work at down where they are, and people say the weather has changed, and that somehow their instruments have got right again of themselves. That is one of our secrets, you see.'

'I wish you would let us know when you come,' said Hildegarde.

'We wouldn't tell anybody, and I am sure we would gladly sit up all night.'

But the fairy shook her head.

'That cannot be,' she said, 'you would not be able to see me down there. Still, I can send you messages sometimes; the little breezes will always be glad to carry you my love or to kiss you for me.'

Suddenly she stopped speaking and held up her hand.

'Hush,' she said; 'yes, I thought I heard it. It is the spinning-wheel fairy--don't you hear the whirr? It means, I fear, that you must be going. Yes, there she is, though your eyes can't see her; she is almost straight above us. She has caught two of the little clouds on their way down, and is sailing on them.'

'How shall we get to her?' exclaimed the children.

'You forget,' laughed the fairy, 'you forget what wings are for,' and with the words she blew softly on their shoulders, the wings stretched themselves, and off flew the children.

The quickness of their flight made them close their eyes, and for a moment or two they could hear nothing but the rush of the air as they met it. Soon, however, came the sound of a now well-known voice.

'So I had to come to fetch you,' it said, 'instead of your looking for me. That shows, I hope, that the air-fairies entertained you well?'

'Yes, indeed,' said both the children. 'It was all so pretty, and they were so kind that we didn't feel the least frightened of offending them.

It was quite different from gnomeland,' Hildegarde went on, 'and yet you say that both these countries are on the way to real Fairyland?'

'Yes,' replied their friend, 'so they are, and so are many, many others.'

'I wish we could see them all,' said Leonore.

'That would not do,' said the fairy. 'It would take you too much out of your own country, which is not good for any one. But now, dears, I want you to rest a little; even if you go to sleep it won't matter, while I am taking you home.'

She held out her arms, and both little girls nestled down beside her.

'Are you going to take us all the way home yourself?' asked Leonore.

'That will be very nice.' The fairy did not reply, but she began spinning again, which certainly no one but a fairy could do seated on a cloud, and with a little girl tucked under each arm. The soft whirr was very soothing and pleasant to hear; soon both pairs of eyes closed drowsily, and it seemed to their little owners that quite a long time had pa.s.sed when they awoke, roused by the touch of a feathery kiss on their foreheads, and a softly whispered 'Goodbye, my dears, goodbye for the present.'

And again they found themselves among the trees a little to the rear of the Castle. It was quite daylight, though the afternoons were drawing in now. They felt perfectly bright and rested, and looked at each other with happy faces.

'It was all too lovely, wasn't it?' said Leonore, 'and this time I don't feel as if we had been dreaming, do you, Hildegarde?'

Hildegarde was on the point of replying, when from far above their heads came the note of some bird as it flew by.

'To think that we know where you were taught to sing, you little dear,'

she said, gazing upwards. 'There will be lots of things to remind us always of the air-fairies--every time we feel the little breezes on our cheeks, or see the clouds chasing each other across the sky!'

'And we have still two nuts left,' said Leonore. 'I wonder what will happen when we crack _them_, Hildegarde?'

'We must be patient,' was the reply; 'perhaps we may have to wait a good while before the time comes for that. But we must hurry home now, I think, or grandmamma may be getting anxious.'

For this day was one which Leonore was spending with Hildegarde at the Castle, as happened now and then for a change, especially when the weather was unsettled. And these were happy days; for the Castle, as Hildegarde had said, was a splendid place for playing in when there were two to play, though rather too large and lonely for one little girl by herself.

Their coffee and cakes were waiting for them in the little turret-room, which was Hildegarde's own when on a visit to her grandparents. And when they had thoroughly enjoyed these, for travels through the air naturally make little flesh-and-blood girls hungry and thirsty, Hildegarde took her friend to the drawing-room, where the old Baroness usually sat. She was a tall, fine-looking old lady, a little bit 'frightening' at first, till one got to know her, for her dark eyes were still bright and piercing, not like Aunt Anna's gentle, dreamy, blue ones. She spent a great deal of her time in working at beautiful embroidery, as her sight was still good, though in the cold weather, which was now coming on, she was not strong enough to go out of doors except on very fine days.

She looked up with a smile as they entered the room.

'Well, my dear children,' she said, 'I hope you have had some good hot coffee, for you have stayed out rather late, and the evenings are getting very cold. Soon you will scarcely be able to go out after dinner, especially as every one is prophesying that we are to have an early winter and a severe one.'

'We have not been at all cold, thank you, grandmamma,' said Hildegarde.

'I hope it won't be a very severe winter, at least not before Christmas--for do you know, Leonore,' and she turned to her little friend, 'that sometimes when it snows heavily here, we cannot even get from the Castle to Aunt Anna's house?'

'Oh dear,' said Leonore, rather startled, 'I shouldn't like that at all; it would be dreadfully dull if we couldn't be together at Christmas.'

'Dull for us too,' said the Baroness, 'for many, many years my dear friend, Fraulein Anna, has spent Christmas with us. But if there is any sign of snowstorms before then, the best plan will be for you three to come and stay at the Castle for a week or two.'

The children's faces lighted up with pleasure at the idea.

'In that case,' said Hildegarde, 'I shall almost hope for signs of a snowstorm. You have no idea how nice and warm the Castle can be made.

Grandpapa loves huge fires, and the walls are so thick that once the rooms get well heated they don't get cold again quickly.'

'Not in your turret, I am afraid, Hildegarde,' said her grandmother.

'You will have to move out of it, I expect. Indeed, this very day I have been talking to old Maria about preparing a room for you on the south side. The turret-rooms cannot but be cold, as they have so much outer wall.'

Hildegarde looked a little distressed.