"How I wish," said Elfrida, "how I wish I could remain a child all my life, to please you!"
"Ah," said Zerina, "it is with you as with the blossoms of the trees: how beautiful the bloom is! but ere you have had time to admire the bud, the warm sun shoots down on it, the blossom bursts and comes to its full maturity."
"How I wish I could see you in your home, if it were only once!" said the child.
"That is impossible," said Zerina; "since our king has come, no child of earth can visit us: but I can come often to you--no one knows it, either here or there; I fly to and fro like a bird; so that we can be happy with one another as long as we live."
"What can I do to please you, dear Zerina?" said the child.
"Let us make a crown again," answered Zerina, taking a golden box from her bosom. She shook two grains upon the earth, and there arose a greenish bush with two red roses, which bent towards each other, and seemed to kiss. They plucked the two roses, and the bush sank again into the earth.
"I wish my rose would not die so soon," said the child.
"Give it to me," said the elf; and breathing on it she kissed it three times, and gave it back to the child, and said, "now it will live till the winter."
"How sweet!" said Elfrida; "I'll set it up in my room like a picture, and kiss it morning and evening."
"Now, dear Elfrida, I must leave you," said Zerina; "the sun is going down, and my time has passed;" and she disappeared from the arbour, and soon regained her fairy home.
From this moment Maria looked with a certain degree of awe and reverence upon her child, and let her roam at her will even more than she had done before--soothing and quieting her husband whenever he wished to go in search of the little fugitive. Maria frequently crept to the hole, and always discovered the elf there playing or chattering with the child.
"Should you like to be able to fly?" asked the elf one day of her little friend.
Zerina embraced her, and they floated up together from the earth to the top of the arbour. The mother, in her anxiety for her darling child, leant forward from her hiding-place to look for them, when Zerina perceived her, and, holding up her finger in a threatening manner, she smiled sweetly on her, and brought down the child to earth again, and disappeared.