He was speaking quite politely this time, and Philomène entered, her pulse all in a flutter, like some bird that has flown in by the window and cannot find its way out again. The door shut to behind her, and she saw that she was in a little square room. The ceiling was of stone, as indeed was only to be expected, since it was part of the wall, but the floor was daintily if unevenly paved with shells of different tints and sizes, while the walls were tapestried with catkins. In the middle of the room stood a monster mushroom, serving as a table, with big toadstools to match on either side for chairs. The lighting was supplied by a will-o’-the-wisp, which hovered about near the ceiling till called for, when it would settle wherever it was needed. Philomène accepted the seat offered her on one of the toadstools, while the little man went to a hollow, mossgrown tree-stump in a corner of the room, and began to look for something inside it.
“You must excuse my going to the cupboard and waiting upon myself,” he remarked. “I do keep a tom-tit, but the weather was so fine that I thought it only fair to give him an afternoon out, so I must lay my own tea.” He placed one half of a walnut-shell, a few clover blossoms, and a scrap of honey-comb upon the mushroom table, and sat down on the other toadstool, opposite to his guest.
“If you have not already had your tea,” he continued, “I can recommend this dew, which is of the very finest quality, and kept cool by means of an icicle. I get my honey from an excellent firm, Buzz, Bumble and Buzz, Limited, and the clover was picked this morning. Plain fare, my dear, for this luxury-loving age, but thoroughly wholesome, I assure you. Have some?”
“I have had my tea already, thank you,” said Philomène, “but I do like the sweet ends of clover very much, if you could spare me one flower.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said the mannikin, and he handed her two, one white and one pink.
“Would you mind telling me, please,” began Philomène, “what you meant just now by speaking about green ribbons? Whose green ribbons?”
“Yours, of course,” said the little man. “I shouldn’t need any. If it hadn’t been for those green ribbons on your christening robe, my young friend, you wouldn’t be sitting here now. It is only the children that have worn green ribbons at their christening who can see the fairies at all.”
“Then you really, really are a fairy?” cried Philomène.
“Should I be living in this house and eating these things if I weren’t?” retorted her host. “I am a fairy, and my name is Sweet William.”
“Am I to call you that?” asked Philomène, doubtfully.