"Umph!" snorted the dragon. "I expect it's just heaps of rubbish. I don't suppose you know half as much as a dragon of the same age as yourself."
"But dragons don't go to school, do they?" asked George.
"Why not?" replied the dragon. "Of course they do; but they don't sit on benches in a schoolroom. They learn out of doors, which is the proper place for a school. They learn useful things, such as how to see what they see and hear what they hear; not to go about the world like blind mice, not believing in the fairies like a little boy I once heard of."
Alexander laughed. "He means you, George. You know, you never liked fairy stories, did you?"
George blushed. "I never said I didn't believe in them, but it always seemed as if they couldn't be real."
"Are you real?" suddenly asked the dragon.
"Of course I am," said George. "I'm as real as real can be."
"Well, you're not a bit, not a little bit real," replied the dragon. "Any boy who is lucky enough to find his way into this country, and then doesn't believe in the fairies, is not more real than a soap bubble, and will burst into little bits just as a bubble does."
Alexander laughed. "I should love to see George all in little bits. I wonder if we could ever fit him together again."
"No; he'd be just like Humpty Dumpty," said the dragon. "There have been hundreds of little boys like that, and I have never heard of one who was mended again. Some were patched up, but there were always pieces missing, and they were never the same boys. Their mothers soon got tired of them and gave them away to the rag-and-bone man."