on the lawn, no fish leapt in the pools, nor bird declared

himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here,
then, at last the Garden of Sleep!

Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust:
gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful

apparitions of either nature, I pursued my way between rich
flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions

de<56>clared her presence patently as trumpets; without this
centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold

topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special
significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She

should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits
of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no

tranced repose, however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage
her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble

bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in
respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no

minor distinctions; to them, the inhabited world is composed of
the two main divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter

being in no way superior to the former--only hopelessly
different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section.)

I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when
there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun

outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight
of me.

"Hallo, sprat!" he said, with some abruptness, "where do you
spring from?"

"I came up the stream," I explained politely and comprehensively,
"and I was only looking for the Princess."

"Then you are a water-baby," he replied. "And what do you think
of the Princess, now you've found her?"

"I think she is lovely," I said (and doubtless I was right,
having never learned to flatter). "But she's wide-awake, so I

suppose somebody has kissed her!"
This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter;

but the Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it
was time for lunch.

"Come along, then," said the grown-up man; "and you too, Water-
baby; come and have something solid. You must want it."

I accompanied them, without any feeling of false delicacy. The
world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day,

and the particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no
importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful, just

what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady,
rather more grownup than the Princess--apparently her mother.

My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the
Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn't

know where Aldershot was, but had no manner of doubt that he was
perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly

correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of
imagination that they are so sadly to seek.

The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in
beautiful clothes--a lord, presumably--lifted me into a high

carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding over me like a
Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had

come from, and to impress the company with my own tooth-brush and
Harold's tables; but either they were stupid--or is it a

characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at the most
ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, "All

right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough
for us." The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no

share in the conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my

friend the Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was
going to be, and he told me what he was going to be; and then

I remarked, "I suppose you two are going to get married?" He
only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. "Because if you aren't,"

I added, "you really ought to": meaning only that a man who
discovered a Princess, living in the right sort of Palace like

this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false to all
recognised tradition.

They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to
the pond and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll.

I was sleepy, and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up
man put two half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he

explained, of treating the other water-babies. I was so touched
by this crowning mark of friendship that I nearly cried; and

thought much more of his generosity than of the fact that the
Princess; ere she moved away, stooped down and kissed me.

I watched them disappear down the path--how naturally arms seem
to go round waists in Fairyland!--and then, my cheek on the cool

marble, lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland
out of real and magic world alike. When I woke, the sun had

gone in, a chill wind set all the leaves a-whispering, and the
peacock on the lawn was harshlycalling up the rain. A wild

unreasoning panic possessed me, and I sped out of the garden like
a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run, and threaded my

doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The half-
crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I

hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted
wood? It was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home,

at nightfall, by the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and
only to be sent tealess to bed seemed infinite mercy to him.

Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such
escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by

backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and
condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then,

nature asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of
sleep, where, a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in

translucent waters with a new half-crown snug under right fin and
left; and thrust up a nose through water-lily leaves to be kissed

by a rose-flushed Princess.
SAWDUST AND SIN

A belt of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond;
and along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you

crept through the undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it
was easy--if your imagination were in healthyworking order--to

transport yourself in a trice to the heart of a tropical forest.
Overhead the monkeys chattered, parrots flashed from bough to

bough, strange large blossoms shone around you, and the push and
rustle of great beasts moving unseen thrilled you deliciously.

And if you lay down with your nose an inch or two from the water,
it was not long ere the old sense of proportion vanished clean

away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on its
surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them

swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a
vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence

at any moment the hairy scalp of a sea serpent might be seen to
emerge.

It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly,
when homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes

of seeing a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide
picture-books, passim) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her

old dimensions, when the sound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere
hard by broke in on my primeval seclusion. Looking out from the

bushes, I saw her trotting towards an open space of lawn the
other side the pond, chattering to herself in her accustomed

fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and her brow knit with
care. Propping up her double burden against a friendly stump,