That Will Happen Only When the Fairies Sing

My little believer and my (slightly older) skeptic:

We were walking home from "Family Sports Night" at the kids' school-- which was, by the way, about 100x more fun than I expected it to be--and we passed a patch of Lilies-0f-the-Valley. I stopped and showed the kids the little tiny bell-shaped flowers and sang them the song my mom first taught me, in her lovely clear voice, when they popped up next to our garage one spring--

White coral bells, upon a slender stalk

Lilies-of-the-valley deck my garden walk.

Oh, don't you wish, that you could hear them ring...

That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Me: "So do you understand the story the song tells?"

7-year-old: "Yes, the bells can't ring until the fairies sing."

5-year-old: "Well, how come I can't hear them singing?"

Me, trying to keep it going: "Probably because it's raining. Fairies don't sing when it's raining."

7-year-old, muttering slightly irritably out of the side of her mouth: "Mama, there ARE no such thing as fairies."

5-year-old, on the other hand, doesn't hear 7-year-old...

and starts a long, earnest monologue about how tomorrow if it's not raining she's going to come and listen and hear the fairies singing, and if it is raining, we'll have to come another day and listen, and then she'll hear the fairies singing...

I kinda hope she doesn't grow out of this one quite yet.