outh. And once she took his arm, and once,
I think, she led him by the hand adown the glade that the glow-worms
lit.

Just how things chanced and happened there is no telling from Mr.
Skelmersdale's disarticulated skeleton of description. He gives little
unsatisfactory glimpses of strange corners and doings, of places where
there were many fairies together, of "toadstool things that shone pink,"
of fairy food, of which he could only say "you should have tasted
it!" and of fairy music, "like a little musical box," that came out of
nodding flowers. There was a great open place where fairies rode and
raced on "things," but what Mr. Skelmersdale meant by "these here things
they rode," there is no telling. Larvae, perhaps, or crickets, or the
little beetles that elude us so abundantly. There was a place where
water splashed and gigantic king-cups grew, and there in the hotter
times the fairies bathed together. There were games being played and
dancing and much elvish love-making, too, I think, among the moss-branch
thickets. There can be no doubt that the Fairy Lady made love to Mr.
Skelmersdale, and no doubt either that this young man set himself to
resist her. A time came, indeed, when she sat on a bank beside him, in
a quiet, secluded place "all smelling of vi'lets," and talked to him of
love.

"When her voice went low and she whispered," said Mr. Skelmersdale, "and
laid 'er 'and on my 'and, you know, and came close with a soft, warm
friendly way she 'ad, it was as much as I could do to keep my 'ead."

It seems he kept his head to a certain limited unfortunate extent. He
saw "'ow the wind was blowing," he says, and so, sitting there in a
place all smelling of violets, with the touch of this lovely Fairy Lady
about him, Mr. Skelmersdale broke it to her gently--that he was engaged!

She had told him she loved him dearly, that he was a sweet human lad for
her, and whatever he would ask of her he should have--even his heart's
desire.

And Mr. Skelmersdale, who, I fancy, tried hard to avoid looking at her
little lips as they just dropped apart and came together, led up to the
more intimate question by saying he would like enough capital to start a
little shop. He'd just like to feel, he said, he had money enough to do
that. I imagine a little surprise in those brown eyes he talked
about, but she seemed sympathetic for all that, and she asked him many
questions about the little shop, "laughing like" all the time. So he got