SUGAR-PLUM HOUSE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12609, 20 November 1926, Page 16

SUGAR-PLUM HOUSE

Do you know the "Neeshus”? They are little chocolate people, who like being eaten up by little boys and girls. They live in Sugar-Plum House, which has walls made out of biscuits, a roof of sponge-cake, a fence of chocolate fingers, and a vegetable garden of brown bread, with cress for cabbages and cauliflowers. The flower-garden in front is white bread and butter, with sweet colouring “hundreds and thousands” for flowers. We began to make it ready for a little sick girl to live in. “Now make a well,” said Sat. “A well!” I said. "What kind of a well?” “A milk well, of course. A milk well makes sick people well.” “Well! well! Who’d have thought it!” “Don’t be silly,” said Ur, as he staggered along beneath a large glass of milk, which he placed outside the door. “There is the milk-well. Now fetch a glass tube for Anne to pump milk into her mouth.” “Lovely! She will be able to make bubbly noises while she pumps it in!” cried the Neeshus. “Yes, it is a suction pump,” said the biggest Neeshie, the one who drives the gold motor-car in the sweet-shop window. “Have you your diarv with you, you Neeshus?” asked Sat. “Yes, sir,” said the Neeshus, holding up a wee, wee book. “See that Anne writes down how much she eats every day; it’s most important that she should eat heaps of sponge-cake and pump large quantities of milk out of her milk-well.” “Right, sir," said the Neeshus. The Neeshus always try to speak together, and always call the fairies “Sir.” “How about an orange-juice well, as well?” I suggested. “Well, that would be as well,” said Sat. “Go and fetch one.” “That’s right! Everything is ready; light the fairy light; put it inside a saucer of water first, and put it inside the house.” The Sugar-Plum House looked lovely when it was ready, and Anne’s mother carried it in to her on a tray. Anne liked it so much that she ate her tea off’it all the time she was ill, and every night the Neeshus she had eaten during the day made themselves all alive and chocolatey for her next morping, and caused fresh brown bread and butter, and fresh white bread and butter, with flowers and fairy vegetables, to grow in the garden. Anne ate so many sponge-cakes off the roof and drank so much milk out of the glass well with the suction pump that 'she soon found herself quite well. —The “Saturday Fairy Book.” uiiiniiiHiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!