"If you like to tell it," we said, smiling up at her.
"Or would you rather count me a sort of a fairy?" she went on.
"Are you one?" said Gerald, softly stroking the pretty soft stuff of which her dress was made.
"Perhaps," she said, smiling again. "I shouldn't wonder if you could decide that better than I can. Try to find out—think of some things I couldn't know unless I were a fairy."
"I know," said Gerald; "our names. You couldn't know them if you weren't a fairy, or—or if perhaps you knowed some fairies who had told you them," he added, getting a little muddled.
"If I had a fairy godmother, for instance, who had told me them," she said.
"Yes—that might be it," said Gerald.
"Well, then—dear me, I mustn't make any mistake, or my godmother would be very angry, after all her teaching," she said, pretending to look very trying-to-remember, like Gerald when he stops at "eight times nine," and screws up his mouth and knits his brows. "Well, to begin with, the eldest. This is Tib—but her real name is Mercedes Regina; this is Gustava; and this is Gerald Charles. And Gustava is generally called 'Gussie.' Now, have I said my lesson rightly?"
We all stared at her.
"You must be a fairy," said Gerald. But Tib and I felt too puzzled to say anything.