Then while Sammie looked on, his eyes getting bigger and bigger and his breath coming faster and faster, until it was like a locomotive or a choo-choo, whatever you call them, going up hill, if that little green man didn’t wave his hands over that puddle of water, where Sammie’s ball had fallen.  And he spoke the magic word, which must never be spoken except on Friday nights, so if you read this on any night but Friday you must skip it, and wait.  The word is (Tirratarratorratarratirratarratum), and I put it in brackets, so there would be no mistake.  Well, all of a sudden, after the magic word was spoken, if Sammie’s ball didn’t come bounding up out of that water, and it was as dry as a bone, and it had a nice, new, clean, white cover on.

“There,” said the little green man proudly, “I guess that’s doing some tricks in the fairy line, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” agreed Sammie, “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Just believe in fairies after this,” said the little green man, as he changed into a bumble bee and flew off.  Now, how would you like to hear about Susie and the fairy godmother to-morrow night, eh?

XXVIII

SUSIE AND THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

You can just imagine how excited Susie and her mamma and papa and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the muskrat, were when Sammie got home and told about the bad fox who had been changed into a country village.  Uncle Wiggily Longears was surprised, too.  He said: 

“My, it does seem to me that there are strange goings on in these woods.  There never used to be any fairies here.  I wonder where they come from?”

“Well, it’s a good thing that fox has been changed into a town,” spoke Papa Littletail.  “If he hadn’t been, I would have had him arrested for frightening you, Sammie.  I know the policeman down at our corner, and I’m sure he would have arrested him for me.  But it’s all right now,” and Sammie’s papa sat back in his chair and read the paper, for he was tired that night from working in the turnip factory.  You see, he changed from the carrot factory, and got a place sorting turnips.  And sometimes he would bring little sweet ones home to the children.

One day Susie was hurrying back from the store with a loaf of bread, a yeast cake and three-and-a-half of granulated sugar, and she was sort of wondering if she would meet the blue fairy again when, just as she got opposite a place where some goldenrod grew, she heard a voice saying: 

“Oh, dear!  Oh, dear me!  I shall never be able to reach it!  Never, never, never!” Susie looked around, and what should she see but a nice, little old lady, trying to break off a stem of goldenrod.

“Oh, dear me suz-dud!” cried the old lady again, and then Susie saw that she was very little indeed, hardly larger than a ten-cent plate of ice cream after it’s all melted.  So she couldn’t reach the goldenrod, she was so little.