This was quite a long speech for the old frog, and he was quite hoarse for two days after it.
Puck stood up on a tall thistle and bowed solemnly. "Listen!" he said. "George Henry is a wonder-child. I said he was, and so he is. If he hadn't had a large piece of fairyness in him he would never, never have come to the party at all. His great-great-great-grandmother, you know, was quite half a fairy. And his mother makes up stories about us in her head. I knew I was right!"
"You are clever!" cried the fairies in chorus.
"Am I not a clever Puck?" he cried, turning head over heels. "Clever, clever, clever!" And he danced round and round the old frog with all the fairies after him.
Well, that's a good thing! All the fairies understand that George Henry is a kind of a fairy, and quite believe that in time he will grow more and more like one, although the storks "Pooh, pooh!" whenever they hear this, and ask: "What about us? He's our boy!"
George is growing up fast, and will soon be a man—and yet that's not really true, for he's not a man at all, but just George.
Alexander said one day—but you will have to wait until another time to hear that!
