



Produced by David Edwards, eagkw and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)






  [Illustration: Cover]

  [Illustration: The Fairies
                 and the Christmas
                 Child]

  [Illustration]

  [Illustration: _Fr._               "We rocked the cradle"
                                         (_Page 182_)]




  [Illustration: Title Page]

  The
  Fairies and
  the Christmas Child
  By Lilian Gask

  The Illustrations are by
  Willy Pogany

  T. Y. Crowell & Co
  New York

  [Illustration]




[Illustration]

Contents


  Chapter                                    Page
     I.  The Fairy Ring                         1

    II.  The Princess with the Sea-Green Hair  25

   III.  Rose-Marie and the Poupican           45

    IV.  The Bird at the Window                67

     V.  The White Stone of Happiness          89

    VI.  The Seven Fair Queens of Pirou       109

   VII.  In the Dwarf's Palace                133

  VIII.  The Silver Horn                      157

    IX.  The Little White Feather             175

     X.  The Wild Huntsman                    197

    XI.  The White Princess                   217

   XII.  The Favourite of the Fates           239

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

List of Illustrations


  "We rocked the cradle"                    _Frontispiece_
                                                      Page
  "I fancied that I had seen those wee brown men"       11

  "The Fairy Ring was thronged with dancing Elves"      20

  "Here a Fairy Princess awaited him"                   33

  Rose-Marie and the Poupican                           54

  "They tossed him three times in the air"              63

  "She hid herself behind a curtain"                    83

  "What ails you, Madame Marguerite?"                   99

  "The Lord of Argouges threw himself on his knees"    114

  "They instantly changed into snow-white birds"       129

  "The Dwarf invited me to be seated"                  141

  "Elberich had jeered him finely"                     151

  "'She is yours, O Otnit!' cried the Dwarf"           154

  "In the old man's place sat a little Dwarf"          167

  "A little white feather danced above their heads"    189

  "'How now?' cried a reassuring voice"                196

  "He entreated the maiden to come down"               205

  "Went shyly down to meet him"                        212

  "Lowered herself from her window by means of a rope
      of pearls"                                       224

  "He tickled the monster's nose"                      233

  "Pepita rushed into his arms"                        253




  [Illustration: _To
                 "The Doctor"
                 and
                 Mrs. Macnaughton-Jones
                 my "Good Fairies"
                 and best of
                 Friends_]




[Illustration]

Chapter I

The Fairy Ring


The worst of being a Christmas Child is that you don't get birthday
presents, but only Christmas ones. Old Naylor, who was Father's
coachman, and had a great gruff voice that came from his boots and was
rather frightening, used to ask how I expected to grow up without proper
birthdays, and I thought I might have to stay little always. When I told
Father this he laughed, but a moment later he grew quite grave.

"Listen, Chris," he said. And then he took me on his knee--I was a small
chap then--and told me things that made me forget old Naylor, and wish
and wish that Mother could have stayed with us. The angels had wanted
her, Father explained; well, we wanted her too, and there were plenty
of angels in heaven, anyway. When I said this Father gave me a great
squeeze and put me down, and I tried to be glad that I was a Christmas
child. But I wasn't really until a long time afterwards, when I had
found the Fairy Ring, and met the Queen of the Fairies.

This was how it happened. Father and I lived at one end of a big town,
in a funny old house with an orchard behind it, where the sparrows ate
the cherries and the apple trees didn't flower. Once upon a time, said
Father, there had been country all round it, but the streets and the
roads had grown and grown until they drove the country away, and now
there were trams outside the door, and not a field to be seen. I often
thought that our garden must be sorry to be so crowded up, and that this
was why it wouldn't grow anything but weedy nasturtiums and evening
primroses.

Father is a doctor, and most awfully clever. If you cut off the top of
your finger, he'd pop it on again in no time, and he used to cure all
sorts of illnesses with different  medicines he made himself
behind a screen.

But though he had lots and lots of patients--sometimes the surgery was
full of them,'specially on cold nights when there was a fire--they
didn't seem to have much money to give him, and sometimes they ran
away with their furniture in the night so's not to pay their bills.
This worried Father dreadfully, and even Santa Claus was scared away
by the things he said. On Christmas Eve the old fellow quite forgot
to fill my stocking. It was all limp and empty when I woke in the
morning, and if I hadn't remembered that when I grew up I was going to
be a Commander-in-Chief, I should never have swallowed that lump in my
throat.

Father couldn't even take me to hear