“Forget her.” Quite so! It was just and simple and sensible. Yet, while I agreed heartily, I had my private misgivings that it might not be so easy to forget a face with that particular quality of witchery about it, a witchery wholly distinct from mere beauty. I've known quite homely women to have it. Not that the brown-and-gold fairy was homely. But I cannot quite think that she was beautiful, either, by the standards of calm and balanced judgment. Only, the calmest judgment would be put to it to preserve its balance with those eyes turned upon it. She had an unbalancing personality, that brown-and-gold fairy, even to an old and rusty-fusty pedagogue like myself.
In fact, she was quite unreasonably vivid to my thoughts for weeks after my one brief meeting with her. I believe that I was actually thinking about her and the Little Red Doctor, seated on my favorite bench in Our Square, on the August morning when a small, soft voice quite close behind me said:—
“Mr. Dominie.”
I got up and turned around. There stood the brown-and-gold fairy. I frowned upon her severely. Not as severely as she doubtless deserved, considering how the Little Red Doctor had winced at the mention of her, but as severely as was practicable in the face of the way she was smiling at me.
“What do you mean by coming up behind me and startling me with your 'Mr. Dominie'?” I demanded.
“I heard the man with the funny hat call you that. Isn't it your name?”
“It will serve. What are you doing in Our Square?”
“I came down to see the place.”
“You came down to see the Little Red Doctor,” I charged.
“Oh, no,” she protested softly. “Just to see the place where he lives. I went near there, but he came out and I ran away.”