In Apple-Blossom Time A Fairy-Tale to Date   By: Clara Louise Burnham (1854-1927)

A Fairy Tale to Date

by

CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM

With Illustrations

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1919, by Clara Louise Burnham All Rights Reserved

[Illustration: Lifted the Girl in after it]

CONTENTS

I. The Princess

II. The Ogre

III. The Prince

IV. The Good Fairy

V. The New Help

VI. The Dwarf

VII. A Midnight Message

VIII. The Meadow

IX. The Bird of Prey

X. The Palace

XI. Mother and Son

XII. The Transformation

XIII. The Goddess

XIV. The Mermaid Shop

XV. The Clouds Disperse

XVI. Apple Blossoms

ILLUSTRATIONS

Drawn by B. Morgan Dennis

Lifted the Girl in after it

Tingling with the Increasing Desire to knock down his Host and catch this Girl up in his Arms

"Geraldine Melody belongs to me. Her father gave her to me"

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

In the Order of their Appearance

The Good Fairy Mehitable Upton

The Princess Geraldine Melody

The Ogre Rufus Carder

The Dwarf Pete

The Slave Mrs. Carder

The Prince Benjamin Barry

The Grouch Charlotte Whipp

The Queen Mrs. Barry

IN APPLE BLOSSOM TIME

CHAPTER I

The Princess

Miss Mehitable Upton had come to the city to buy a stock of goods for the summer trade. She had a little shop at the fashionable resort of Keefeport as well as one in the village of Keefe, and June was approaching. It would soon be time to move.

Miss Upton's extreme portliness had caused her hours of laborious selection to fatigue her greatly. Her face was scarlet as she entered a popular restaurant to seek rest and refreshment. She trudged with all the celerity possible toward the only empty table, her face expressing wearied eagerness to reach that desirable haven before any one else espied it.

Scarcely had she eased herself down into the complaining chair, however, before a reason for the unpopularity of this table appeared. A steady draught blew across it strong enough to wave the ribbons on her hat.

"This won't do at all," muttered Miss Mehitable. "I'm all of a sweat."

She looked about among the busy hungry horde, and her eye alighted on a table at which a young girl sat alone.

"Bet she'll hate to see me comin', but here goes," she added, slipping the straps of her bag up on her arm and grasping the sides of the table with both hands.

Ben Barry was wont to say: "When Mehit is about to rise and flee, it's a case of Yo heave ho, my hearties. All hands to the ropes." But then it was notorious that Ben's bump of reverence was an intaglio.

Miss Upton got to her feet and started on her trip, her eyes expressing renewed anxiety.

A lantern faced, round shouldered man, whose ill fitting clothes, low collar several sizes too large, and undecided manner suggested that he was a visitor from the rural districts, happened to be starting for the young girl's table at the same moment.

Miss Upton perceived his intention.

"Let him set in the draught," she thought. "He don't look as if he'd ever been het up in his life."

With astonishing swiftness her balloon like form took on an extra sprint. The man became aware of her object and they arrived at the coveted haven nearly simultaneously.

Miss Mehitable's umbrella decided the victory. She deftly moved it to where a hurdle would have intervened for her rival in their foot race, and the preoccupied girl at the table looked up somewhat startled as a red face atop a portly figure met her brown eyes in triumph. The girl glanced at the defeated competitor and took in the situation. The man scowled at Mehitable's umbrella planted victoriously beside its owner and his thin lips expressed his impatience most unbecomingly. Then he caught sight of the vacant table and started for that with the haste which, like many predecessors, he was to find unnecessary.