"No, it's shorter when you know the way. Sometimes I get back in a minute. But put your ear against the wall and listen."
Ellen put her ear against the golden wall. As she listened she gave a little gasp of amazement, and yet what she heard was not so very wonderful; it was only the voices of her mother and the seamstress talking quietly together in the sewing-room.
Presently the voices grew fainter. Ellen leaned harder against the wall to catch their tones. Then all in a moment the wall yielded to her weight, just as a snowdrift might, and she fell through it.
She put out her hands to save herself, and caught hold of something hard and solid; it was the shelf of the bookcase. She was back in her own familiar nursery. She looked about her. There was no sign of where she had come through, no break in wall or ceiling. With a little cry she leaned forward and thrust her hands back between the book-shelves. They touched only the hard, cold wall. The vines were only painted on the paper; they would not draw aside under her eager fingers.
As Ellen turned from the bookcase she saw the shape of the Fairy Tale standing between her and the window. She was sure she saw it. It smiled and waved its hand to her, and then it was gone like the fading of one's breath upon the window-pane.
"Dear Fairy Tale, where are you?" cried Ellen; but there was no reply.
Ellen waited a moment. "Fairy Tale!" she whispered.
Opening the door into the entry, the little girl ran down to the sewing-room as fast as she could. "Mamma, mamma!" she called.
She burst like a little whirlwind into the room where her mother and the seamstress were quietly at work, and threw herself into her mother's lap. "I've been having the queerest time," she cried excitedly; "and you never could guess where I've been; never."
"Wait," said her mother; "you're tumbling my work. And how excited you are, dear!"
She put aside her sewing, and took the little girl upon her lap. "Now, what have you been doing?"
Breathlessly and with flushing cheeks Ellen told her mother all about her journey and her strange adventures on her way to the Queerbodies' house.
The mother listened and wondered. "That was a wonderful dream, indeed," she said.
"A dream! Why, it wasn't a dream, mamma. It really happened. And then I saw the Fairy Tale after I came back. And then the Forgotten Story itself; I couldn't have dreamed all that, you know."