He turned away from the car window and looked at Johanna; and then out popped the most surprising question from her.
“Hark, laddy! Have ye forgotten all about the fairies and the stories Johanna used to tell?”
David smiled without knowing it.
“Why, no. No, I haven’t. A person never entirely forgets about fairies, even if he does grow up—does he? I guess I haven’t been thinking about them lately, that’s all.”
“Sure, and ye haven’t!” Johanna’s voice had the same folksy ring to it that it had in the nursery days. “Faith, ’tis hard keeping them lively when ye are living in the city. Wasn’t I almost giving over believing in them myself, after living there a few years? It wasn’t till I moved to the hilltops and the green country that I got them back again.”
“Have you seen any up there?”
David asked it as one might inquire about the personal habits of Santa Claus or the chances of finding the crock of gold at the rainbow’s end, experiences one has never had oneself, but which one is perfectly willing to credit to another upon receipt of satisfactory evidence. Moreover, fairies were undeniably comfortable to think about just now. And what is more, whenever things happen that seem unreal and that make you feel strange and unreal yourself, that is the very time that fairies become the most real and easy to believe in. David discovered this now, and it made him snuggle closer to Johanna and repeat his question:
“Have you really seen any up there?”
Johanna puckered her forehead and considered for a moment.
“’Tis this way, laddy. I can’t be saying honestly that I have laid my two eyes on one for certain; and then again I can’t say honestly that I haven’t. Many’s the time in the woods or thereabouts that I’ve had the feeling I’ve just stumbled on one, just missed him by a wink, or beaten him there by a second. The moss by the brookside would have a trodden-down look and the bracken would be swaying with no help o’ the wind—for all the world as if a wee man had just been brushing his way through.”