"I may here remark that it was very amusing to see her run, if her mode of progression could properly be called running. For first she would make a bound; then, having alighted, she would run a few steps, and make another bound. Sometimes she would fancy she had reached the ground before she actually had, and her feet would go backwards and forwards, running upon nothing at all, like those of a chicken on its back. Then she would laugh like the very spirit of fun; only in her laugh there was something missing. What it was, I find myself unable to describe. I think it was a certain tone, depending upon the possibility of sorrow—morbidezza, perhaps. She never smiled."
"I am not sure about your physics, Mr. Smith," said the doctor. "If she had no gravity, no amount of muscular propulsion could have given her any momentum. And again, if she had no gravity, she must inevitably have ascended beyond the regions of the atmosphere."
"Bottle your philosophy, Harry, with the rest of your physics," said the clergyman, laughing. "Don't you see that she must have had some weight, only it wasn't worth mentioning, being no greater than the ordinary weight of the atmosphere. Besides, you know very well that a law of nature could not be destroyed. Therefore, it was only witchcraft, you know; and the laws of that remain to be discovered—at least so far as my knowledge goes.—Mr. Smith, you have gone in for a fairy-tale; and if I were you, I would claim the immunities of Fairyland."
"So I do," I responded fiercely, and went on.
* * * * *
"CHAPTER VII.—TRY METAPHYSICS.
"After a long avoidance of the painful subject, the king and queen resolved to hold a counsel of three upon it; and so they sent for the princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an armchair, in a sitting posture. Whether she could be said to sit, seeing she received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not pretend to determine.
"'My dear child,' said the king, 'you must be aware that you are not exactly like other people.'
"'Oh, you dear funny papa! I have got a nose and two eyes and all the rest. So have you. So has mamma.'
"'Now be serious, my dear, for once,' said the queen.