"Your ticket would have told you that."
"I think I must have given it up to the man," he answered doubtfully, "the guard who told me that the next station was Chartres."
"Well, it's all very mysterious," I said.
"Yes," he said, getting up rather weakly to go on again, "it is." And he sighed again. "I come here every year. I hope," he added a little wistfully, "I hope, you see, that it may happen to me again … but it never does."
"It will at last," said I to comfort him.
And, will you believe it, that simple sentence made him in a moment radiantly happy; his face beamed, and he positively thanked me, thanked me warmly.
"You speak like one inspired," he said. (I confess I did not feel like it at all.) "I shall go much lighter on my way after that sentence of yours."
He bade me good-bye with some ceremony and slouched off, with his eyes set towards the west and the more distant hills.
THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND
A child of four years old, having read of Fairyland and of the people in it, asked only two days ago, in a very popular attitude of doubt, whether there were any such place, and, if so, where it was; for she believed in her heart that the whole thing was a pack of lies.