"Or bracing, or just damp, eh? Do you know, my dear, that at Frognall End mushrooms are fourpence a pound."
"That has nothing to do with it."
"Are you sure?" The delicious fairy-look came to his eyes. "Of course they prefer the Russian kind of mushrooms with red tops—warmer to sit on. That's why they love Russia, and Russian hearts stay young. And besides, they like to live where people are really and truly superstitious.
"That's what's so wrong with England. Ah, these board schools! I want to dig up all the board schools and plant red mushrooms. Then, of course, the fairies will each have an endowed mushroom, the children will be properly taught how to stay young, and we shall live happily ever afterward.
"Do you know I called on the prime minister, and, politics apart, he's not at all a bad fellow. We quite agreed, especially about drowning the Board of Education, but then the nonconformist conscience would get shocked, while as to the treasury—bigots, my dear, are getting more bigotty every day."
I was getting mixed.
"So you see, Kate, with mushrooms at fourpence a pound, it stands to reason that they're very plentiful at Frognall End, with fairies in strict proportion: one mushroom—one fairy, that is in English weather. In a dry season, of course, they can sit on the ground, although it wouldn't be quite the thing; whereas in wet weather they really require their mushrooms—and you know they're much too careless to clear up afterward. Yes, at Frognall End young David would get what modern children need so very badly—some wholesome uneducation."
This the father explained in all its branches.
1. Consider the lilies.