Soap-Bubble Stories For Children   By: Fanny Barry

Page 125 on the top of a dias changed to on the top of a dais

Page 131 tobogganned down a steep changed to tobogganed down a steep

SOAP BUBBLE STORIES

Soap Bubble Stories.

FOR CHILDREN.

BY

FANNY BARRY ,

AUTHOR OF "THE FOX FAMILY," "THE OBSTINATE ELM LEAF," "THE BEARS OF WUNDERMERK," ETC.

New York:

JAMES POTT & CO., 14 & 16, ASTOR PLACE.

1892.

TO

VERA, ELSIE, OSKAR, OLGA, ERIK, NEVA, JESSIE, LEO, DOROTHY, CLAUDE, AND HERBERT.

It was twilight, and the children, tired of playing, gathered round the fire.

Outside, the snow fell softly, softly; and the bare trees shook their branches in the keen air. The pleasant glow of the blazing logs lighted up the circle of happy faces, and peopled the distant corners with elfin shadows.

All the afternoon the children, pipe in hand, with soap suds before them, had been blowing airy bubbles that caught the gleams of a hundred flying rainbows but now in the fading daylight, the pipes were put aside, and they threw themselves down on the fur rug, and looked with thoughtful eyes into the caverns of the fire.

"What can we do now?" they cried, "Won't you make us some bubbles?"

And someone sitting in the shadow, who had watched and admired their handiwork; whipped up some white froth in a fairy basin, and taking a pipe, she blew them some bubbles.

Not so beautiful as the children's own, with their pure reflections of the light and sunshine but the best she could fashion with the materials she had at hand; for the only soap she could find was Imagination, and her pipe was a humble black pen.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE TROLL IN THE CHURCH FOUNTAIN 1

THE IMP IN THE CHINTZ CURTAIN 13

HEARTSEASE 22

A STORY OF SIENA 27

THE STONE MAIDEN 44

THE GRASS OF PARNASSUS 51

THE HEDGEHOGS' COFFEE PARTY 53

UNCLE VOLODIA 68

THE ANGEL AND THE LILIES 95

THE ALPEN ECHO 100

THE SCROLL IN THE MARKET PLACE 103

A SCRAP OF ETRUSCAN POTTERY 109

THE GOATS ON THE GLACIER 114

THE GREAT LADY'S CHIEF MOURNER 139

DAME FOSSIE'S CHINA DOG 142

PRINCESS SIDIGUNDA'S GOLDEN SHOES 161

THE BADGER'S SCHOOL 179

BOBBIE'S TWO SHILLINGS 203

THE TROLL IN THE CHURCH FOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER I.

It was a village of fountains. They poured from the sides of houses, bubbled up at street corners, sprang from stone troughs by the roadside, and one even gushed from the very walls of the old Church itself, and fell with a monotonous tinkle into a carved stone basin beneath.

The old Church stood on a high plateau overlooking the lake. It jutted out so far, on its great rock, that it seemed to overhang the precipice; and as the neighbours walked upon the terrace on Sundays, and enjoyed the shade of the row of plane trees, they could look down over the low walls of the Churchyard almost into the chimneys of the wooden houses clustering below.

There were wide stone seats on the terrace, grey and worn by the weather, and by the generations of children who had played round them; and here the mothers and grandmothers, with their distaffs in their hands, loved to collect on summer evenings.