Chapter IV: Part 4

“It is indeed a pleasure,” said he, smiling so as to show every one of his thirty-two teeth—a very polite, but very difficult thing to do—“it is indeed a pleasure to meet once more my old pupil.”

“The pleasure is mutual, I am sure,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson. If it is sometimes impossible to be polite and truthful at the same moment, that is not my fault, nor Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s.

“I have been travelling about,” said the Professor, still smiling immeasurably, “increasing my stock of wisdom. Ah, dear lady—we live and learn, do we not? And now I am really a far more competent teacher than when I had the honour of instructing you. May I hope for an engagement as Professor in your Academy?”

“I have not yet been able to arrange for a regular course of Magic,” said the schoolmistress; “it is a subject in which parents, especially royal ones, take but too little interest.”

“It was your favourite study,” said the professor.

“Yes—but—well, no doubt some day——”

“But I want an engagement _now_,” said he, looking hungrier than ever; “a thousand pounds for thirteen lessons—to _you_, dear lady.”

“It’s quite impossible,” said she, and she spoke firmly, for she knew from history how dangerous it is for a Magician to be allowed anywhere near a princess. Some harm almost always comes of it.

“Oh, very well!” said the Professor.

“You see my pupils are all princesses,” she went on, “they don’t require the use of magic, they can get all they want without it.”

“Then it’s ‘_No_’?” said he.

“It’s ‘No thank you kindly,’” said she.

Then, before she could stop him, he sprang past her out at the door, and she heard his boots on the oilcloth of the passage. She flew after him just in time to have the schoolroom door slammed and locked in her face.

“Well, I never!” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson. She hastened to the top of the house and hurried down the schoolroom chimney, which had been made with steps, in case of fire or other emergency. She stepped out of the grate on to the schoolroom hearthrug just one second too late. The seven Princesses were all gone, and the Professor of Magic stood alone among the ink-stained desks, smiling the largest smile Miss Fitzroy Robinson had seen yet.

“Oh, you naughty, bad, wicked man, you!” said she, shaking the school ruler at him.

* * * * *

The next day was Saturday, and the King of the country called as usual to take his daughter Daisy out to spend her half holiday. The servant who opened the door had a coarse apron on and cinders in her hair, and the King thought it was sackcloth and ashes, and said so a little anxiously, but the girl said, “No, I’ve only been a-doing of the kitchen range—though, for the matter of that—but you’d best see missus herself.”

So the King was shown into the best parlour where the tasteful wax-flowers were, and the antimacassars and water-colour drawings executed by the pupils, and the wool mats which Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s bed-ridden aunt made so beautifully. A delightful parlour full of the traces of the refining touch of a woman’s hand.

Miss Fitzroy Robinson came in slowly and sadly. Her gown was neatly made of sack-cloth—with an ingenious trimming of small cinders sewn on gold braid—and some larger-sized cinders dangled by silken threads from the edge of her lace cap.

The King saw at once that she was annoyed about something. “I hope I’m not too early,” said he.

“Your Majesty,” she answered, “not at all. You are always punctual, as stated in your references. Something has happened. I will not aggravate your misfortunes by breaking them to you. Your daughter Daisy, the pride and treasure of our little circle, has disappeared. Her six royal companions are with her. For the present all are safe, but at the moment I am unable to lay my hand on any one of the seven.”

The King sat down heavily on part of the handsome walnut and rep suite (ladies’ and gentlemen’s easy-chairs, couch and six occasional chairs) and gasped miserably. He could not find words. But the schoolmistress had written down what she was going to say on a slate and learned it off by heart, so she was able to go on fluently.

“Your Majesty, I am not wholly to blame—hang me if I am—I mean hang me if you must; but first allow me to have the honour of offering to you one or two explanatory remarks.”

With this she sat down and told him the whole story of the Professor’s visit, only stopping exactly where I stopped when I was telling it to you just now.

The King listened, plucking nervously at the fringe of a purple and crimson antimacassar.

“I never _was_ satisfied with the Professor’s methods,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson sadly; “and I always had my doubts as to his moral character, doubts now set at rest for ever. After concluding my course of instruction with him some years ago I took a series of lessons from a far more efficient master, and thanks to those lessons, which were, I may mention, extremely costly, I was mercifully enabled to put a spoke in the wheel of the unprincipled ruffian——”

“Did you save the Princesses?” cried the King.

“No; but I can if your Majesty and the other parents will leave the matter entirely in my hands.”

“It’s rather a serious matter,” said the King; “my poor little Daisy——”

“I would ask you,” said the schoolmistress with dignity, “not to attach too much importance to this event. Of course it is regrettable, but unpleasant accidents occur in all schools, and the consequences of them can usually be averted by the exercise of tact and judgment.”

“I ought to hang you, you know,” said the King doubtfully.

“No doubt,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson, “and if you do you’ll never see your Daisy again. Your duty as a parent—yes—and your duty to me—conflicting duties are very painful things.”

“But can I trust you?”

“I may remind you,” said she, drawing herself up so that the cinders rattled again, “that we exchanged satisfactory references at the commencement of our business relations.”

The King rose. “Well, Miss Fitzroy Robinson,” he said, “I have been entirely satisfied with Daisy’s progress since she has been in your charge, and I feel I cannot do better than leave this matter entirely in your able hands.”

The schoolmistress made him a curtsey, and he went back to his marble palace a broken-hearted monarch, with his crown all on one side and his poor, dear nose red with weeping.

The select boarding establishment was shut up.

Time went on and no news came of the lost Princesses.

The King found but little comfort in the fact that his other child, Prince Denis, was still spared to him. Denis was all very well and a nice little boy in his way, but a boy is not a girl.

The Queen was much more broken-hearted than the King, but of course she had the housekeeping to see to and the making of the pickles and preserves and the young Prince’s stockings to knit, so she had not much time for weeping, and after a year she said to the King—

“My dear, you ought to do something to distract your mind. It’s unkinglike to sit and cry all day. Now, do make an effort; do something useful, if it’s only opening a bazaar or laying a foundation stone.”

“I am frightened of bazaars,” said the King; “they are like bees—they buzz and worry; but foundation stones——” And after that he began to sit and think sometimes, without crying, and to make notes on the backs of old envelopes. So the Queen felt that she had not spoken quite in vain.

A month later the suggestion of foundation stones bore fruit.

The King floated a company, and Fortunatus Rex & Co. became almost at once the largest speculative builders in the world.

Perhaps you do not know what a speculative builder is. I’ll tell you what the King and his Co. did, and then you will know.

They bought all the pretty woods and fields they could get and cut them up into squares, and grubbed up the trees and the grass and put streets there and lamp-posts and ugly little yellow brick houses, in the hopes that people would want to live in them. And curiously enough people did. So the King and his Co. made quite a lot of money.

It is curious that nearly all the great fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work.

The ugly little streets crawled further and further out of the town, eating up the green country like greedy yellow caterpillars, but at the foot of the Clover Hill they had to stop. For the owner of Clover Hill would not sell any land at all—for any price that Fortunatus Rex & Co. could offer. In vain the solicitors of the Company called on the solicitors of the owner, wearing their best cloaks and swords and shields, and took them out to lunch and gave them nice things to eat and drink. Clover Hill was not for sale.

At last, however, a little old woman all in grey called at the Company’s shining brass and mahogany offices and had a private interview with the King himself.

“I am the owner of Clover Hill,” said she, “and you may build on all its acres except the seven at the top and the fifteen acres that go round that seven, and you must build me a high wall round the seven acres and another round the fifteen—of _red_ brick, mind; none of your cheap yellow stuff—and you must make a brand new law that any one who steals my fruit is to be hanged from the tree he stole it from. That’s all. What do you say?”

The King said “Yes,” because since his trouble he cared for nothing but building, and his royal soul longed to see the green Clover Hill eaten up by yellow brick caterpillars with slate tops. He did not at all like building the two red brick walls, but he did it.

Now, the old woman wanted the walls and the acres to be this sort of shape—

But it was such a bother getting the exact amount of ground into the two circles that all the surveyors tore out their hair by handfuls, and at last the King said, “Oh bother! Do it this way,” and drew a plan on the back of an old Act of Parliament. So they did, and it was like this—

+---+---+
| 1 | 2 |
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| 13| 14| 15| I | 3 |
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| 12| II|III| IV| 4 |
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| 11| V | VI|VII| 5 |
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| 10| 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 |
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The old lady was very vexed when she found that there was only one wall between her orchard and the world, as you see was the case at the corner where the two 1’s and the 15 meet; but the King said he couldn’t afford to build it all over again and that she’d got her two walls as she had said. So she had to put up with it. Only she insisted on the King’s getting her a fierce bull-dog to fly at the throat of any one who should come over the wall at that weak point where the two 1’s join on to the 15. So he got her a stout bull-dog whose name was Martha, and brought it himself in a jewelled leash.

“Martha will fly at any one who is not of kingly blood,” said he. “Of course she wouldn’t dream of biting a royal person; but, then, on the other hand, royal people don’t rob orchards.”

So the old woman had to be contented. She tied Martha up in the unprotected corner of her inner enclosure and then she planted little baby apple trees and had a house built and sat down in it and waited.

And the King was almost happy. The creepy, crawly yellow caterpillars ate up Clover Hill—all except the little green crown on the top, where the apple trees were and the two red brick walls and the little house and the old woman.

The poor Queen went on seeing to the jam and the pickles and the blanket washing and the spring cleaning, and every now and then she would say to her husband—

“Fortunatus, my love, do you _really_ think Miss Fitzroy Robinson is trustworthy? Shall we ever see our Daisy again?”

And the King would rumple his fair hair with his hands till it stuck out like cheese straws under his crown, and answer—

“My dear, you must be patient; you know we had the very highest references.”

Now one day the new yellow brick town the King had built had a delightful experience. Six handsome Princes on beautiful white horses came riding through the dusty little streets. The housings of their chargers shone with silver embroidery and gleaming glowing jewels, and their gold armour flashed so gloriously in the sun that all the little children clapped their hands, and the Princes’ faces were so young and kind and handsome that all the old women said: “Bless their pretty hearts!”

Now, of course, you will not need to be told that these six Princes were looking for the six grown-up Princesses who had been so happy at the Select Boarding Establishment. Their six Royal fathers, who lived many years’ journey away on the other side of the world, and had not yet heard that the Princesses were mislaid, had given Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s address to these Princes, and instructed them to marry the six Princesses without delay, and bring them home.

But when they got to the Select Boarding Establishment for the Daughters of Respectable Monarchs, the house was closed, and a card was in the window, saying that this desirable villa residence was to be let on moderate terms, furnished or otherwise. The wax fruit under the glass shade still showed attractively through the dusty panes. The six Princes looked through the window by turns. They were charmed with the furniture, and the refining touch of a woman’s hand drew them like a magnet. They took the house, but they had their meals at the Palace by the King’s special invitation.

King Fortunatus told the Princes the dreadful story of the disappearance of the entire Select School; and each Prince swore by his sword-hilt and his honour that he would find out the particular Princess that he was to marry, or perish in the attempt. For, of course, each Prince was to marry one Princess, mentioned by name in his instructions, and not one of the others.

The first night that the Princes spent in the furnished house passed quietly enough, so did the second and the third and the fourth, fifth and sixth, but on the seventh night, as the Princes sat playing spilikins in the schoolroom, they suddenly heard a voice that was not any of theirs. It said, “Open up Africa!”

The Princes looked here, there, and everywhere—but they could see no one. They had not been brought up to the exploring trade, and could not have opened up Africa if they had wanted to.

“Or cut through the Isthmus of Panama,” said the voice again.

Now, as it happened, none of the six Princes were engineers. They confessed as much.

“Cut up China, then!” said the voice, desperately.

“It’s like the ghost of a Tory newspaper,” said one of the Princes.

And then suddenly they knew that the voice came from one of the pair of globes which hung in frames at the end of the schoolroom. It was the terrestrial globe.

“I’m inside,” said the voice; “I can’t get out. Oh, cut the globe—anywhere—and let me out. But the African route is most convenient.”

Prince Primus opened up Africa with his sword, and out tumbled half a Professor of Magic.

“My other half’s in there,” he said, pointing to the Celestial globe. “Let my legs out, do——”

But Prince Secundus said, “Not so fast,” and Prince Tertius said, “Why were you shut up?”

“I was shut up for as pretty a bit of parlour-magic as ever you saw in all your born days,” said the top half of the Professor of Magic.

“Oh, you were, were you?” said Prince Quartus; “well, your legs aren’t coming out just yet. We want to engage a competent magician. You’ll do.”

“But I’m not all here,” said the Professor.

“Quite enough of you,” said Prince Quintus.

“Now look here,” said Prince Sextus; “we want to find our six Princesses. We can give a very good guess as to how they were lost; but we’ll let bygones be bygones. You tell us how to find them, and after our weddings we’ll restore your legs to the light of day.”

“This half of me feels so faint,” said the half Professor of Magic.

“What are we to do?” said all the Princes, threateningly; “if you don’t tell us, you shall never have a leg to stand on.”

“Steal apples,” said the half Professor, hoarsely, and fainted away.

They left him lying on the bare boards between the inkstained desks, and off they went to steal apples. But this was not so easy. Because Fortunatus Rex & Co. had built, and built, and built, and apples do not grow freely in those parts of the country which have been “opened up” by speculative builders.

So at last they asked the little Prince Denis where he went for apples when he wanted them. And Denis said—

“The old woman at the top of Clover Hill has apples in her seven acres, and in her fifteen acres, but there’s a fierce bulldog in the seven acres, and I’ve stolen all the apples in the fifteen acres myself.”

“We’ll try the seven acres,” said the Princes.

“Very well,” said Denis; “You’ll be hanged if you’re caught. So, as I put you up to it, I’m coming too, and if you won’t take me, I’ll tell. So there!”

For Denis was a most honourable little Prince, and felt that you must not send others into danger unless you go yourself, and he would never have stolen apples if it had not been quite as dangerous as leading armies.

So the Princes had to agree, and the very next night Denis let himself down out of his window by a knotted rope made of all the stockings his mother had knitted for him, and the grown-up Princes were waiting under the window, and off they all went to the orchard on the top of Clover Hill.

They climbed the wall at the proper corner, and Martha, the bulldog, who was very wellbred, and knew a Prince when she saw one, wagged her kinked tail respectfully and wished them good luck.

The Princes stole over the dewy orchard grass and looked at tree after tree: there were no apples on any of them.

Only at last, in the very middle of the orchard there was a tree with a copper trunk and brass branches, and leaves of silver. And on it hung seven beautiful golden apples.

So each Prince took one of the golden apples, very quietly, and off they went, anxious to get back to the half-Professor of Magic, and learn what to do next. No one had any doubt as to the half-Professor having told the truth; for when your legs depend on your speaking the truth you will not willingly tell a falsehood.

They stole away as quietly as they could, each with a gold apple in his hand, but as they went Prince Denis could not resist his longing to take a bite out of his apple. He opened his mouth very wide so as to get a good bite, and the next moment he howled aloud, for the apple was as hard as stone, and the poor little boy had broken nearly all his first teeth.

He flung the apple away in a rage, and the next moment the old woman rushed out of her house. She screamed. Martha barked. Prince Denis howled. The whole town was aroused, and the six Princes were arrested, and taken under a strong guard to the Tower. Denis was let off, on the ground of his youth, and, besides, he had lost most of his teeth, which is a severe punishment, even for stealing apples.

The King sat in his Hall of Justice next morning, and the old woman and the Princes came before him. When the story had been told, he said—

“My dear fellows, I hope you’ll excuse me—the laws of hospitality are strict—but business is business after all. I should not like to have any constitutional unpleasantness over a little thing like this; you must all be hanged to-morrow morning.”

The Princes were extremely vexed, but they did not make a fuss. They asked to see Denis, and told him what to do.

So Denis went to the furnished house which had once been a Select Boarding Establishment for the Daughters of Respectable Monarchs. The door was locked, but Denis knew a way in, because his sister had told him all about it one holiday. He got up on the roof and walked down the schoolroom chimney.

There, on the schoolroom floor, lay half a Professor of Magic, struggling feebly, and uttering sad, faint squeals.

“What are we to do now?” said Denis.

“Steal apples,” said the half-Professor in a weak whisper. “Do let my legs out. Slice up the Great Bear—or the Milky Way would be a good one for them to come out by.”

But Denis knew better.

“Not till we get the lost Princesses,” said he, “now, what’s to be done?”

“Steal apples I tell you,” said the half-Professor, crossly; “seven apples—there—seven kisses. Cut them down. Oh go along with you, do. Leave me to die, you heartless boy. I’ve got pins and needles in my legs.”

Then off ran Denis to the Seven Acre Orchard at the top of Clover Hill, and there were the six Princes hanging to the apple-tree, and the hangman had gone home to his dinner, and there was no one else about. And the Princes were not dead.

Denis climbed up the tree and cut the Princes down with the penknife of the gardener’s boy. (You will often find this penknife mentioned in your German exercises; now you know why so much fuss is made about it.)

The Princes fell to the ground, and when they recovered their wits Denis told them what he had done.

“Oh why did you cut us down?” said the Princes, “we were having such happy dreams.”

“Well,” said Denis, shutting up the penknife of the gardener’s boy, “of all the ungrateful chaps!” And he turned his back and marched off. But they ran quickly after him and thanked him and told him how they had been dreaming of walking arm in arm with the most dear and lovely Princesses in the world.

“Well,” said Denis, “it’s no use dreaming about _them_. You’ve got your own registered Princesses to find, and the half-Professor says, ‘Steal apples.’”

“There aren’t any more to steal,” said the Princes—but when they looked, there were the gold apples back on the tree just as before.

So once again they each picked one. Denis chose a different one this time. He thought it might be softer. The last time he had chosen the biggest apple—but now he took the littlest apple of all.

“Seven kisses!” he cried, and began to kiss the little gold apple.

Each Prince kissed the apple he held, till the sound of kisses was like the whisper of the evening wind in leafy trees. And, of course, at the seventh kiss each Prince found that he had in his hand not an apple, but the fingers of a lovely Princess. As for Denis, he had got his little sister Daisy, and he was so glad he promised at once to give her his guinea-pigs and his whole collection of foreign postage stamps.

“What is your name, dear and lovely lady?” asked Prince Primus.

“Sexta,” said his Princess. And then it turned out that every single one of the Princes had picked the wrong apple, so that each one had a Princess who was not the one mentioned in his letter of instructions. Secundus had plucked the apple that held Quinta, and Tertius held Quarta, and so on—and everything was as criss-cross-crooked as it possibly could be.

And yet nobody wanted to change.

Then the old woman came out of her house and looked at them and chuckled, and she said—

“You must be contented with what you have.”

“We _are_,” said all twelve of them, “but what about our parents?”

“They must put up with your choice,” said the old woman, “it’s the common lot of parents.”

“I think you ought to sort yourselves out properly,” said Denis; “I’m the only one who’s got his right Princess—because I wasn’t greedy. I took the smallest.”

The tallest Princess showed him a red mark on her arm, where his little teeth had been two nights before, and everybody laughed.

But the old woman said—

“They can’t change, my dear. When a Prince has picked a gold apple that has a Princess in it, and has kissed it till she comes out, no other Princess will ever do for him, any more than any other Prince will ever do for her.”

While she was speaking the old woman got younger and younger and younger, till as she spoke the last words she was quite young, not more than fifty-five. And it was Miss Fitzroy Robinson!

Her pupils stepped forward one by one with respectful curtsies, and she allowed them to kiss her on the cheek, just as if it was breaking-up day.

Then, all together, and very happily, they went down to the furnished villa that had once been the Select School, and when the half-professor had promised on his honour as a Magician to give up Magic and take to a respectable trade, they took his legs out of the starry sphere, and gave them back to him; and he joined himself together, and went off full of earnest resolve to live and die an honest plumber.

“My talents won’t be quite wasted,” said he; “a little hanky-panky is useful in most trades.”

When the King asked Miss Fitzroy Robinson to name her own reward for restoring the Princesses, she said—

“Make the land green again, your Majesty.”

So Fortunatus Rex & Co. devoted themselves to pulling down and carting off the yellow streets they had built. And now the country there is almost as green and pretty as it was before Princess Daisy and the six parlour-boarders were turned into gold apples.

“It was very clever of dear Miss Fitzroy Robinson to shut up that Professor in those two globes,” said the Queen; “it shows the advantage of having lessons from the best Masters.”

“Yes,” said the King, “I always say that you cannot go far wrong if you insist on the highest references!”

_THE SUMS THAT CAME RIGHT_

“IF twenty-seven barrelsful of apples cost £25 13_s._ 3_d._, what would the same barrels be worth if they had been packed by a dishonest person, who only put in 7/9ths of apples in each barrel and the rest sawdust?”

This was the sum.

It does not look very hard, perhaps, to you who have studied ardently for years at a Board School, or a High School, or a Preparatory School for the sons of gentlemen; but to Edwin it looked as hard as a ship’s biscuit. But he went for it like a man, and presently produced an Answer and his Master wrote a big curly R across the sum. Perhaps you do not know that a big curly R means Right? As for the answer to the sum, I will try to get a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (who is a very terrible person), to work it out for you, and if he can do it I will put the answer at the end of this story. I cannot work it myself.

Edwin was glad to see the large curly R. He saw it so seldom that to meet it was a real pleasure.

“But what’s the use?” he said. “Everything else leads to something else, except lessons. If you put seeds in the garden they come up flowers, unless they’re rotten seeds or you forget where you put them. And if you buy a rabbit—well, there it is, unless it dies. And if you eat your dinner—well, you’re not hungry any more for an hour or two. But lessons!”

He bit his penholder angrily and put his head into his desk to look for nibs to play Simpkins minor with. You know the game of nibs, of course? He held up the lid of the desk on his head, as I daresay you have often done, and the inside of the desk was darkish, so that the sudden light at the very back of the desk showed quite brightly and unmistakably.

“Those firework fusees, O Crikey!” was Edwin’s first thought.

But it was no firework fusee. It was like glow-worms, only a thousand times more bright and white. For it was the light of pure reason, and it glowed from the glorious eyes of the Arithmetic Fairy. You did not know that there was an Arithmetic Fairy? If you knew as much as I do, it would be simply silly for me to try to tell you stories, wouldn’t it?

Her wonderful eyes gleamed and flashed straight into the round goggling eyes of the amazed Edwin.

“Upon my word!” she said.

Edwin said nothing.

“Did no one ever tell you?” the fairy went on, shaking out her dress, which was woven of the integral calculus, and trimmed with a dazzling fringe of logarithms. “Did no one ever tell you that the things that happen when you’ve done your sums right, happen when you’re grown up?”

“I don’t care what happens then,” Edwin dared to say, for the flashing eyes were kind eyes. “I shall be a pirate, or a bushranger, or something.”

The fairy drew herself up, and her graceful garland of simple equations trembled as Edwin breathed heavily.

“A Pirate,” said she, “a nice sort of pirate who can’t calculate his men’s share of the plunder to three-seventeenths of a gold link of the dead captain’s chain! A fine bushranger who can’t arrange the forty-two bullets from the revolvers of his seven dauntless followers so that each of the fifteen enemies gets his fair share! Go along with you!” said the Arithmetic Fairy.

But Edwin’s eyes were, as I said, wide open, goggling.

“I say,” he suddenly remarked, “how jolly pretty you are.”

The Arithmetic Fairy has but one weakness—a feminine weakness. She loves a pretty speech. If blunt, so much the worse; yet even bluntness....

She looked down and played shyly with the bunch of miscellaneous examples in vulgar fractions which adorned her waistband.

“I suppose you can’t be expected to understand, yet,” she said, and she said it very gently.

Edwin took courage.

“When I do things I want something to happen at once. ‘I want a white rabbit and I want it _now_.’”

She did not recognise the quotation.

“Get your Master to set you a little simple multiplication sum in white rabbits,” she said. “Goodbye, my child. You’ll know me better in time, and as you know me better you’ll love me more.”

“I ... you’re lovely now,” said Edwin.

The Fairy laughed, and spread her dazzling wings glistening with all the glories of the higher mathematics.

Edwin closed dazzled eyes, and opened them as the desk lid shut down on his head, swayed by no uncertain hand. It was the mathematical master’s hand, in fact.

A new example was set. And, curiously enough, white rabbits were in it.

“If seven thousand five hundred and sixty-three white rabbits,” it began. Edwin, his brain in a whirl, worked it correctly, by a sort of inspiration, like an ancient prophet or a calculating machine.

When he returned, with his books in a strap, to the red villa whose gables meant home for him, he found an excited crowd dancing round the white-painted gates.

The whole of the front garden, as well as most of the back garden, was a seething mass of white rabbits. Seven thousand five hundred and sixty-three there were, to be exact. I alone know this. The joyous Edwin and his distracted parents were never able to count them.

“What a lot of hutches we shall want,” Edwin thought gaily. But when his father came home from the Stock Exchange, where he spent his days in considering 7⅝ and 10-3/32—no doubt under the direct guidance of the Arithmetic Fairy, he said at once—

“Send for the poulterer.”

This was done. Only one pair of white rabbits remained the property of Edwin, but these, by the power of the Arithmetic Fairy, became ten by Christmas.

The rabbits disposed of, peace spread a longing wing over the villa, but was not allowed to settle.

“Oh, please ’m,” the startled cook, cap all crooked, exclaimed in the hall, “the cellar is choke-full of apples—most of ’em bad ’m—_I_ never see no one deliver them, nor yet give no receipt.”

The cook, for once in a lurid career, spoke truth. The cellar _was_ full of apples. Nineteen pounds nineteen and twopence and one-third of a pennyworth—to be accurate.

Edwin went to bed, feeling now quite sure that he had _not_ dreamed the Arithmetic Fairy, and anxiously wondering what to-morrow’s sums would be about. Not, he trusted, about snakes, or Sunday School teachers.

The next day’s sum was about oranges. Edwin did it correctly, and went home a prey to the most golden apprehensions. Nor were these unfounded. The whole of the dining-room and most of the hall—up to the seventh step of the neatly carpeted stairs, was golden with oranges. Edwin’s father said some severe things about practical jokers, and sent for the greengrocer. Edwin ate nine 3/7th oranges, and went to bed yellow, but not absolutely unhappy.

But now he was quite sure.

On the following day his sum dealt with elephants, and in such numbers that his father, on returning from business, yielded to a very natural annoyance, and gave notice to his landlord that he should, at Lady Day, leave a villa where elephants and oranges occurred to such an extent.

No one suspected Edwin of having anything to do with these happenings. And indeed, it was not his fault, so how and why could or should he have owned up to it?

I wish I had time to tell you of the events that occurred when Edwin’s sums were set in buttered muffins. Of the seventy-five pigs travelling in a circle at varying rates, I can only say that part of this circle ran through Edwin’s mother’s drawing-room. Nor can I here relate the tale of the three hundred lightning conductors which were suddenly found to be attached to the once happy villa-home. Edwin’s mother cried all day when she was not laughing, and people came from far and near to see the haunted house. For when it came to four thousand white owls and a church steeple every one felt that it was more than a mere accident.

Edwin’s master had a pretty taste in sums, and about once a term he used to set a sum about canes. Edwin worked that sum wrong on purpose, so I suppose it served him right that the canes should be at home before he was, just as they would have been if he had worked the sum properly, and as he had borrowed his father’s razor that morning to sharpen a slate-pencil, the fifty-seven canes were not all thrown away.

But it was the sum about the cistern that convinced Edwin of the desperate need of finding the Arithmetic Fairy, and begging her to take back the present she had made him. It is not polite to ask this, but Edwin had to do it. You see in the sum the cistern had to leak three pints in thirteen minutes and a quarter, but the cistern at home happened to have a little leak of its own already, where Edwin had tried his new drill on it, and the two leaks together managed so well that when Edwin got home he found water dripping from all the top bedroom ceilings and the staircase was a sort of Niagara. It was very exciting—but when the plumber came he let Edwin’s father know all about the little drilled hole, and Edwin got the credit of the leak in the sum, which was much larger and most unfair. His father spoke to Edwin about this matter in his study, and it was then that Edwin saw that he must put an end to the sums that came true.

So he went up to his bedroom with his candle and his arithmetic book. Directly he put the candle on the chest of drawers a big splash of water from the ceiling fell right on the flame and it went out. He had to go right down stairs to get another light. Then he put the candle on the dressing table—splash—out it went. Chair. Splash! Out! At last he got the candle to stay alight on the washhand-stand, which was, by some curious accident, the only dry place in the room.

Then he opened his book. Somewhere in the book he knew there must be something that would fetch the fairy. He said the Multiplication Table up to nine times-after that, as you know, the worst is over. But no fairy appeared.

Then he read aloud the instructions for working the different rules, including the examples given. There was no result.

Then he called to the Fairy—but she did not come.

Then he tried counting. Then counting and calling mixed with other things. Like this:

“Oh, good Fairy! One-two-three-four-five-six-seven; do come and help me! Eight-nine-ten-eleven! Beautiful, dear, kind, lovely fairy! Nine nines are eighty-one! Dear fairy, do come! Seven million two hundred thousand six hundred and fifty-nine! I will always love you if you will come to me now. Three-sevenths of five-ninths of five-twelfths of sixteen-fiftieths. You were so kind the other day. Two and two are four, and three are seven! Do come now—you’ve no idea what an awful mess you’ve got me into. Seven nines are sixty-three—though I know you meant it kindly. Dear Fairy. Thirteen from thirty-seven leaves twenty-four. Do come and see what a hole I’m in—do come—and the product will give you the desired result!”

Edwin stopped, out of breath. He looked round him for the Fairy. But his room, with the water dripping from the roof and the wet towels and basins on the floor, was not a fairy-like place. Edwin saw, with a sigh, that it was no go.

“I’ll have another go in prep to-morrow,” he said. This he did.

The Mathematical Master was pleased with himself that day because he had succeeded in preventing his best boy from yielding to the allurements of the Head-master and the Classical side.

Of course his class knew at once what kind of temper the Mathematical Master was in—you know we always know that—and Edwin ventured to ask that the examples that day might be about a model steam engine.

“Only _one_, sir, please,” he was careful to explain. The Master kindly consented, and by great good fortune the example did not deal with a faulty boiler, nor with any other defect—but concerned itself solely with the model engine’s speed. So Edwin knew, when he had worked his sum, exactly what pace the model engine he would find at home would be good for. He worked the sum right.

Then he put his head into his desk and began again.

“Oh, good Fairy, if a sum of £4,700 is to be divided between A, B, and C,—do, do come and help me. Three-tenths of a pound is six shillings, dear Fairy—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—oh, lovely Fairy—” and so on.

But no Fairy came. And Simpkins minor whispered—

“What are you chunnering about?” and stuck a pin into Edwin’s leg. “Can’t you do the beastly example?”

Then quite suddenly Edwin knew what he had to do. He made up an example for himself. This was it.

“If 7,535 fairies were in my desk at school and I subtracted 710 and added 1,006, and the rest flew away in 783 equal gangs, how many would be left over in the desk?”

When he had worked it the answer was one. Very quickly he opened his desk again, and there was the Arithmetic Fairy, looking more lovely than ever in a rich gown of indices, lined with surds, that fell to her feet in osculating curves. In her hand, like a sceptre, shone the starry glory of the binomial theorem. But her eyes were starrier still. She smiled, but her first words were severe.

“You careless boy,” she said. “Why can’t you learn to be accurate? It’s the merest chance you got me. You should have stated your problem more clearly, and you should have said seven thousand _Arithmetic_ Fairies. Why suppose you had found one fairy in your desk, and it had been the Grammar Fairy, or the Football Fairy—what would you have done then?”

“_Is_ there a Football Fairy?” Edwin asked.

“Of course. There’s a fairy for everything you have to learn. There’s a Patience Fairy, and a Good-temper Fairy, and a Fairy to teach people to make bread, and another to teach them to make love. Didn’t you really know that?”

“No,” said Edwin, “but I say, look here——”

“I am looking,” she said, fixing her bright eyes on Edwin’s goggling ones, exactly as at their first meeting.

“No—I mean—oh—I say—” he said.

“So I hear,” she said.

“No, but—no kid,” said he.

“Of course there isn’t any kid,” said she.

“Dear, kind, pretty Fairy,” Edwin began again.

“That’s better,” said the Fairy.

“Didn’t you hear all I was saying to you yesterday, when the water was dripping from the ceiling all over the room?”

“From nineteen several spots. Of course I did.”

“Well then,” said Edwin.

“You mean that you’re tired of having things happen when you do your sums correctly? You prefer the old way!”

“Yes, _please_,” said Edwin, “if you’re sure you don’t mind? I know you meant it for kindness, but, oh, it is most beastly, when you get into the thick of it.” He was thinking of the elephants, I fancy.

“I only did it to please you,” said the Fairy pouting. “I’ll make everything as it was before. Does _that_ please you? And there’s your third wish. You know we always give three wishes. It’s customary in the profession. What would you like?”

Edwin had not attended properly to this speech, so he had only heard “as it was before” and then “What would you like?”

So he said, “I should like to see you again some day.”

The Arithmetic Fairy smiled at him, and her beauty grew more and more radiant. She had not expected this. “I made sure you would ask for a pony or a cricket bat or a pair of white mice,” she said. “You _shall_ see me again, Edwin. Goodbye.”

And the bright vision faded away in a dim mist of rosy permutations.

When Edwin got home he heard that a model engine had been discovered in the larder, and had been given to his younger brother. There are some wrongs, some sorrows, to which even a pen like mine cannot hope to do justice.

* * * * *

Edwin is now a quiet-looking grown-up person in a black frock coat; and his hair is slowly withdrawing itself from the top of his learned head. I suppose it feels itself unworthy to cover so great a brain. The fairy has been with him, unseen, this many a year. The other day he saw her.

He had been Senior Wrangler, of course; that was nothing to Edwin. And he was Astronomer Royal, but that, after all, he had a right to expect.

But it was when he took breath from his researches one day, and suddenly found that he had invented a bran-new Hypernebular Hypothesis—that he thought of the Fairy, and thinking of her, he beheld her. She was lightly poised above a pile of books based on Newton’s “Principia,” and topped with his own latest work, “The Fourth and Further Dimensions.” He knew her at once, and now he appreciated, more than ever in his youth, the radiance of her eyes and of her wings, for now he understood it.

“Dear, beautiful Fairy,” he said, “how glad I am to see you again.”

“I’ve been with you all the time,” she said. “I wish I could do something more for you. Is there anything you want?”

The great Mathematician who was Edwin ran his hand over his thin hair.

“No,” he said, “no.” And then he remembered the school and Simpkins minor and the old desk he used to keep firework fusees in. “Unless,” he added, “you could make me young again.”

She dropped a little tear, clear as a solved problem.

“I can’t do _that_,” she said. “You can’t have _everything_. The only person who could do that for you is the Love Fairy. If you had found her instead of me you would have been always young, but you wouldn’t have invented the Hypernebular Hypothesis.”

“I suppose I shall never never find her now?” said Edwin, and as he spoke he looked out of the window to the garden, where a girl was gathering roses.

“I wonder!” said she. “The Love Fairy doesn’t live in schooldesks or books on Fourth Dimensions.”

“I wonder!” said Edwin. “Does the Love Fairy live in gardens?”

“I wonder!” echoed the Arithmetic Fairy, a little sadly, and she spread her bright wings and flew out of the open window and out of this story.

Edwin went out into the rose garden. And did he find the Love Fairy?

I wonder!

* * * * *

PS.—The Fellow of Trinity says the answer to that sum is nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and two pence and one-third of a penny.

Does the Fellow of Trinity speak the truth?

I wonder!

_THE TOWN IN THE LIBRARY IN THE TOWN IN THE LIBRARY_

ROSAMUND and Fabian were left alone in the library. You may not believe this; but I advise you to believe everything I tell you, because it is true. Truth is stranger than story-books, and when you grow up you will hear people say this till you grow quite sick of listening to them: you will then want to write the strangest story that ever was—just to show that _some_ stories can be stranger than truth.

Mother was obliged to leave the children alone, because Nurse was ill with measles, which seems a babyish thing for a grown-up nurse to have—but it is quite true. If I had wanted to make up anything I could have said she was ill of a broken heart or a brain-fever, which always happens in books. But I wish to speak the truth even if it sounds silly. And it _was_ measles.

Mother could not stay with the children, because it was Christmas Eve, and on that day a lot of poor old people came up to get their Christmas presents, tea and snuff, and flannel petticoats, and warm capes, and boxes of needles and cottons and things like that. Generally the children helped to give out the presents, but this year Mother was afraid they might be going to have measles themselves, and measles is a nasty forward illness with no manners at all. You can catch it from a person before they know they’ve got it, and if Rosamund and Fabian had been going to have it they might have given it to all the old men and women who came up to get their Christmas presents. And measles is a present no old men or women want to have given them, even at Christmas time, no matter how old they may be. They would not mind brain-fever or a broken heart so much perhaps—because it is more interesting. But no one can think it interesting to have measles, at any rate till you come to the part where they give you jelly and boiled sole.

So the children were left alone. Before Mother went away she said—

“Look here, dears, you may play with your bricks, or make pictures with your pretty blocks that kind Uncle Thomas gave you, but you must not touch the two top-drawers of the bureau. Now don’t forget. And if you’re good you shall have tea with me, and perhaps there will be cake. Now you _will_ be good, won’t you?”

Fabian and Rosamund promised faithfully that they would be _very_ good and that they would not touch the two top-drawers, and Mother went away to see about the flannel petticoats and the tea and snuff and tobacco and things. When the children were left alone, Fabian said—

“I am going to be very good, I shall be much more good than Mother expects me to.”

“We _won’t_ look in the drawers,” said Rosamund, stroking the shiny top of the bureau.

“We won’t even _think_ about the insides of the drawers,” said Fabian. He stroked the bureau too and his fingers left four long streaks on it, because he had been eating toffee.

“I suppose,” he said presently, “we may open the two _bottom_ drawers? Mother couldn’t have made a mistake—could she?”

So they opened the two bottom drawers just to be sure that Mother hadn’t made a mistake, and to see whether there was anything in the bottom drawers that they ought not to look at.

But the bottom drawer of all had only old magazines in it. And the next to the bottom drawer had a lot of papers in it. The children knew at once by the look of the papers that they belonged to Father’s great work about the Domestic Life of the Ancient Druids, and they knew it was not right—or even interesting—to try to read other people’s papers.

So they shut the drawers and looked at each other, and Fabian said, “I think it would be right to play with the bricks and the pretty blocks that Uncle Thomas gave us.”

But Rosamund was younger than Fabian, and she said, “I am tired of the blocks, and I am tired of Uncle Thomas. I would rather look in the drawers.”

“So would I,” said Fabian. And they stood looking at the bureau.

Perhaps you don’t know what a bureau is—children learn very little at school nowadays—so I will tell you that a bureau is a kind of chest of drawers. Sometimes it has a bookcase on the top of it, and instead of the two little top corner drawers like the chests of drawers in a bedroom it has a sloping lid, and when it is quite open you pull out two little boards underneath—and then it makes a sort of shelf for people to write letters on. The shelf lies quite flat, and lets you see little drawers inside with mother of pearl handles—and a row of pigeon holes—(which are not holes pigeons live in, but places for keeping the letters carrier-pigeons could carry round their necks if they liked). And there is very often a tiny cupboard in the middle of the bureau, with a pattern on the door in different coloured woods. So now you know.

Fabian stood first on one leg and then on the other, till Rosamund said—

“Well, you might as well pull up your stockings.”

So he did. His stockings were always just like a concertina or a very expensive photographic camera, but he used to say it was not his fault, and I suppose he knew best. Then he said—

“I say, Rom! mother only said we weren’t to _touch_ the two top-drawers——”

“I _should_ like to be good,” said Rosamund.

“I _mean_ to be good,” said Fabian. “But if you took the little thin poker that is not kept for best you could put it through one of the brass handles and I could hold the other handle with the tongs. And then we could open the drawer without touching it.”