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.