Excerpt from The Fairy of the Birch Tree: A Tale for Children There was once upon a time an ancient castle, with a beautiful park surrounding it, the abode of a wealthy Prince and Princess. They were young, and had an only child, a lovely little girl, whose name was Veronica. No fairies were invited to her christening, for the best of reasons, that none had been seen in the neighbourhood for many years. In the memory of some of the old people who lived near the castle, time was, when the forest abounded with the little elves, but they had all left the place on a sudden, owing, as it was said, to an affront which had been offered to their Queen, by the late owner of the castle. Thus little Veronica had no fairy godmother. She was a good child, and very fond of her home. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.