‘Her absence need not cast a shadow on us all,’ he cried; ‘the fairy from Germany is on her way home. She telegraphs to me from Dover; she will be here in time for the fairies’ meeting. And having passed the seas and crossed the sands, she found the story of the Little Glass Man at last.’
‘A good thing, a good thing,’ said Fairy Queen, taking the telegram; ‘as it is, I have lost all patience with her. From France, from Ireland, from Greece, even from Russia, numbers of tales have arrived. And from Germany, so much nearer to us, so much more literary, nothing comes. Just as though there were not plenty of fairy tales to be found there! But I have no doubt she has wasted so much time looking for these special stories, just because you had set your heart on having them.’
‘Upon my word,’ Gogul Mogul said. And he jumped over his toes, a feat he was fond of performing, serenely smiling at the large blot of ink which ornamented his forefinger.
‘Of course you will meet her at the station,’ said Fairy Queen; ‘see her home, and call for her again in a cab. The meeting begins at nine; all the fairies who are in town will be there. And mind you do not keep us waiting as you did last month!’
Her tone was severe; but Gogul Mogul went on smiling his sweetest smile, while he muttered to himself—
‘Then skilful most, when most severely judged,
But chance it not.’
A few hours later daylight had passed away and a bright moon looked down into the thronged thoroughfare of Holborn, putting to shame the yellow lights of the gas lamps and the glare of the few shop windows that were lit up by electric light. Into side courts and up winding alleys the moon made her way, and poured down full into a narrow passage up which ladies’ figures, bundled in ulsters and shawls, were hurrying in twos and threes.
Under an arched doorway they disappeared. The moon could not look round the corner, but above there was a row of arched stone windows. She looked in at these into a long large wainscotted old hall, and there she found those figures and knew them again.
I doubt if you would have known them. I should not myself but that I had been helping downstairs in the cloak-room, taking hats and wraps and ulsters, even one pair of goloshes, and mixing them up for the surprise of seeing what lovely creatures came out from those dark clothes. Have you ever seen a butterfly squeeze out of a chrysalis, I wonder? Have you seen those shining creatures shake themselves free from their dark covering, take flight, and vanish away? But those lovely creatures whose cloaks I helped to ticket could not vanish away from me altogether. Like the moon, I managed to find them again.