And don't you recollect,' said the Robin, 'you wanted to shoot at me with your bow and arrow, only your little sister begged you not?'

‘O no!' said Willy, 'I don't remember that.'

'O yes!' said the Robin, 'you did; but Miss Jane begged me off, and you let me fly out of the window, for which I was very much obliged to you.'

'I recollect that,' said Willy, 'quite well.'

'Yes, Master Willy, I never forget anyone, who has been kind to me. But pray how did you come here into the Witch's Forest?'

'O,' cried Willy, sobbing, 'I went looking for a gold mine up in the Witch's Glen, and fell into the water.'

O Master Willy! how could you do such a thing, when you know your mamma told you not! How could you be so naughty! you never heard of my hunting about for a gold mine.'

And here the little Robin, who was by nature a steady and a virtuous bird, and had never any temptation to hunt about for gold mines, though he might be tempted by a bread crumb, assumed, as we all like to assume under similar circumstances, a shocked aspect, and an admonitory frown. And

holding up his right leg, and shaking it gravely at Willy, he could not resist the satisfaction of saying with some degree of superiority and severity, 'O fie! fie! fie!'

'I know I was very naughty,' answered Willy, 'but please, Mr. Robin, can you help me out?'

'I do not know,' said the Robin, 'what to say to it.' For he, like even the best of robins, had some little failings, and one of them was that he liked to make the most of his kind acts. And so he shook his head, and looked grave, and hemm'd and ha'd, as if he saw a world of difficulties. But at last he took compassion on Willy's terror, and ventured to own that he could do one thing.

'There is a good kind Fairy,' he said, 'whom I know, and who has a great dislike to that horrid Witch; and though I know she is very busily engaged at this moment, because the Great Exhibition is coming on, still I will see what can be done. You must

stay quietly here, and not blubber any more, but wipe your eyes like a man, and I will be back in a

jiffey.'

21

CHAPTER III.

THE ROBIN FLIES FOR HELP TO THE FAIRY.

So the little Robin flew off, and fortunately found the good Fairy at home. She was not, indeed, at present living in any of her grand subterraneous palaces built of marble, and jasper, and porphyry, and crystal, and filled with all kinds of precious stones and curiosities. For as the Cock Robin had said, the new Grand International Exhibition was about to open, and Technenelli (that was her name: she was of the old Italian Technenelli family, who intermarried with the Watts' and Potts' of Manchester and Birmingham, but the children took more after the rather plain but clever English father than after the beautiful but very indolent Italian mother) Technenelli, as I was saying, though a princess as well as a fairy, had taken a quiet lodging at Brompton, close to the Brompton Boilers, in

order that she might be able to devote the whole of her time and attention to a grand work of art, which she was anxious to complete in the purest English taste, in order to grace the Exhibition, in which she took a profound interest, and fully believed, with a number of good and wise men, that the sight of so many chairs and tables, beds, and knives and forks, and other conveniences of life as were there to be gathered together, would add infinitely to the glory of England, the wealth of the manufacturers, and the comfort of the labourers, and would above all be an infallible recipe for preventing any more wars. She had indeed been requested to mould an equestrian statue to match those which have recently been erected in London, and in the same style of beauty. And as a model of the work which was contemplated, she had been provided with a large dingy dirty green rockinghorse of metal, and a bolster struck upright on it, with a Roman helmet on the top, and two smaller bolsters for legs, with a long sword dangling down between them, which figure obtained one of the first prizes. And she had also been asked to add several other monstrosities to the bronze zoology of

London, all in the English taste; a lion especially, which was to be placed with its back to the Queen's windows at Buckingham Palace, to match the two which sit before her Majesty as she drives out of the gates. But this she said she could not bring herself to do, even to gratify the English Public and the Minister of Public Works. But to show her general respect for the English nation, who do excel so much in some branches of art, she consented to erect something which would combine for the English mind the beautiful and the useful, and which above all should be cheap. She was therefore devoting herself to the erection of two grand Trophies, which, having interest with a person who had interest with the Commissioners, she had, for a consideration to both parties, obtained permission to erect in the centre of the nave of the building, just where the procession ought to pass, and where it would chiefly obstruct the view of the building, interfere with the ceremony, and annoy the spectators, so that it could not fail to become a conspicuous object, and must therefore draw attention to the names of the manufacturers, whom she desired to benefit. For this she knew was the