‘A happy encounter,’ chuckled the midget, rubbing his hands together. ‘I’m a tailor by trade. Fit you out in no time. Three yards of gossamer spun out of lovers’-dream. The finer the mesh the higher the price. Excuse my speaking commercially, but business is business, you know.’
For the first time Mr. Pardoe’s heart went out to this odd creature. ‘I share your admirable sentiments. Business is business. But I deplore this rather fanciful talk about dreams and gossamer, this—ah—second-rate poetry, if I may call it so. But there, I’m only a plain business man.’
‘Do you believe in God?’ asked the midget surprisingly.
Mr. Pardoe looked revolted. ‘A rather indelicate question, is it not? However, since you have seen fit to ask it, I will confess that I have never found any particular need for believing in the Person to whom you allude.’
The midget put out his tongue, looking inconceivably pert. ‘I’m God,’ said he.
‘Pardon me,’ Mr. Pardoe replied, with immense dignity. ‘I cannot stand here and listen to blasphemy. I am a member of the Church of England.’
‘Don’t know the name,’ said the midget. ‘If it’s an inn, take me to it, like a good fellow.’
‘Before we continue this conversation,’ said Mr. Pardoe, beginning to relish the sound of his own voice, ‘I feel it only fair to say that I entertain the gravest suspicions of you. I suspect you of being a figment of my imagination, perhaps a mere dream. I am not aware of having eaten anything calculated to disagree with me, but that is what has probably happened. It’s a lesson to me, which I shall not easily forget, that one cannot be too careful about one’s diet.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ remarked the midget. He paused to draw three circles in the grass with the point of his foot. ‘But if you want some Greenwich Time you’ve come to the right place. Slip these shoes on.’ In the centre of the middle circle was a pair of loose-fitting shoes, rather like goloshes, made of the skin of a green reptile. It seemed to be covered with eyes. Mr. Pardoe, convinced now that he was dreaming, obediently slipped his feet into these shoes, which immediately began to dance. He found it impossible to control them. That didn’t surprise him so much as did his enjoyment of the dance. ‘Come along,’ said the midget, kicking up his heels, and Mr. Pardoe, following in the wake of that preposterous figment of his imagination, danced down the avenues of Faery with a light heart. Something was released inside him. He felt himself shrink till he was scarcely bigger than his guide, and the loss of that frock coat and that pair of nicely creased striped trousers distressed him no longer. Was it possible that the child he had secreted so long had at last broken out, and that the old John Pardoe, that bond-holding, cheque-endorsing animal, was no more? Was it possible that he had died, and that this was the glorious resurrection promised to the faithful? Mr. Pardoe’s thoughts buzzed in his brain like a hive of bees when he remembered this little tailor-fellow’s blasphemous claim to godhead.
Nothing more unlike Mr. Pardoe’s conception of God can be imagined than the ruddy-faced mischievous creature who stood in the doorway of his house to welcome his guest. The house bore a striking resemblance to a country inn, the best kind of country inn, and Mr. Pardoe fell instantly in love with it. The sight of it induced in him a thirst such as he had never in all his life experienced before.