They change maybe to a field of turnips, and I have seen a farmer priding himself on a flock of sheep that I knew were really a most merry company of dryads and fauns in disguise.

I had but to make the sign of the cross, sprinkle some holy water upon them, and call them by their sweet secret names, and the whole rout had been off to the woods, with mad gambol and song, before the eyes of the astonished farmer.
It was so with Hebe.

She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood.

In spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of blossom for miles across the furze and scattered birches! I might have known it was Hebe.
Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a prodigality, for it is many a day since it was uprooted.

The little dryad long since fled away weeping,--fled away, said evil tongues, fled away to the town.
Well do I remember our last meeting.