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who knows the properties of a boat, I can tell you.'

Eugene laughed again.

'I hope it will tell him as long a story as you have made out about it,' said he, ' about the city, and the cathedral, and the river. Hillo! what's that? and that?' repeated he, starting up.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, Eugene,' said a voice from the opposite bank of the river, scarcely audible, but speaking at its highest pitch.

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out of the way of a still larger pebble than those which had startled him. What are you doing, Fred?'

'I was only trying the range of my balls,' said a boy about thirteen years old, standing up from among the tall fronds of the Osmunda regalis that rose up nearly as high as his head. 'I didn't think I had got it so exactly.'

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'Pray be less exact another time, FieldMarshal Fred,' said Eugene; that is, if I am to be your target.'

'But

'But isn't it jolly that I got the elevation all at once?'

'Not at all,' said Eugene, rubbing his leg with every demonstration of solicitude. 'You forget that I am a man and a brother.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed a voice, silvery, gentle, and sweet as the tones of the river, or of the light breeze that the rarefying of the sun created when a little past his meridian.

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But where did the voice come from? No one was to be seen but the three boys, Frank still watching his little boat slipping down fall after fall, Fred standing up in a half apologetical attitude, and Eugene with his arms stretched out as if to deprecate any further experiments on the proper elevation of a pebble, of which he was to be the mark.

'Ha, ha, ha! Well done, Fred; I am glad you disturbed the philosopher.'

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I am not a philosopher, Miss Pert,' said Eugene; indeed, I am the very reverse of one, or I suppose I should have sat patiently

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tiently in the character of the Field-Marshal's target.'

If any one had wondered whence this same sweet silvery voice came, he would soon have had his curiosity gratified; for a flutter of white garments appeared at the top of an enormous boulder, one side of which sloped to within a few feet of the ground; and in a moment a little creature stood upon the tufted grass, so strangelooking, so elf-like, so wonderfully delicate in her make, that she seemed like the haunting spirit of that matchless valley, or like some one of the fairies that had traced those deep green circlets in the turf. 'So it has pleased your Pixie-ship to descend at last,' said Eugene. 'And now,

since we have had an oracle of the rock

through the agency of such a being, I think the mystery of the talking oak may be solved in the same way.'

6 It must have been a very wise Pixy who talked so much rhyme and reason too. I don't think any poet I know could have been so sage and have made such good

rhymes

rhymes as the Pixy of the Oak that you are so fond of,' said the new-comer.

'I know! any poet you know! How should you know the kings of the past and the future, you, vegetating and growing weedy in this damp valley?'

"Why, you think you know them ; and don't you grow weedy in this damp valley?'

'By no means, except in the holidays. I can understand the poets because I've been at Eton, "in among the throng of "

'Boys! Oh, yes; likely indeed to understand the poets! as if schoolboys had souls above marbles.'

'Nina, Nina, you shall not have the dormouse if you treat your elders and betters in this cavalier manner,' said Eugene, pelting the little fragile-looking being with the heads of the flowers that grew thickly amongst the grass.

I shall not stand that, I can tell you, Mr. Would-be Poet,' said the elf; and sitting down on the turf, she took off her shoes and stockings, and walked across the

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river, stepping daintily from stone to stone, her little feet and ankles gleaming like ivory in the clear brown water.

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Nina, Nina, where are you going? why will you leave your guide, philosopher, and friend?'

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that

Because I don't choose to be shelled in

and put myself under

way. I shall go the protection of the fort.'

'Shelled! Flowered, you mean.

least, you look as white as if

At

you were so.

Excuse the pun, Miss Pert, though the spelling does not answer.'

But Eugene's voice was drowned in the distance filled with the sound of countless tiny falls of the river, the waters of which were now low. The little light figure of Nina, slender as a reed, holding up her white garments, with her pale brown hair hanging in disorder round her face, which was nearly as white as her frock, passed easily from rock to rock.

She is really an unearthly-looking being,' said Eugene to himself. 'Such a little fragile thing can never stand against

the

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