Eva's Adventures in Shadow-Land

Book excerpt: She had been reading fairy-tales, after her lessons were done, all the morning; and now that dinner was over, her father gone to his office, the baby asleep, and her mother sitting quietly sewing in the cool parlor, Eva thought that she would go down across the field to the old mill-pond; and sit in the grass, and make a fairy-tale for herself. There was nothing that Eva liked better than to go and sit in the tall grass; grass so tall that when the child, in her white dress, looped on her plump white shoulders with blue ribbons, her bright golden curls brushed back from her fair brow, and her blue eyes sparkling, sat down in it, you could not see her until you were near her, and then it was just as if you had found a picture of a little girl in a frame, or rather a nest of soft, green grass. 10 All through this tall, wavy grass, down to the very edge of the pond, grew many flowers,—violets, and buttercups, and dandelions, like little golden suns. And as Eva sat there in the grass, she filled her lap with the purple and yellow flowers; and all around her the bees buzzed as though they wished to light upon the flowers in her lap; on which, at last,—so quietly did she sit,—two black-and-golden butterflies alighted; while a great brown beetle, with long black feelers, climbed up a tall grass-stalk in front of her, which, bending slightly under his weight, swung to and fro in the gentle breeze which barely stirred Eva's golden curls; and the field-crickets chirped, and even a snail put his horns out of his shell to look at the little girl, sitting so quietly in the grass among the flowers, for Eva was gentle, and neither bee, nor butterfly, beetle, cricket, or snail were afraid of her. And this is what Eva called making a fairy-tale for herself.