Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,
of which, however, I had no cause to repent-
"How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything?"
"Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty years?"
said she. "Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a mere matter of
relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether
insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old Uncle
Ralph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of so
little consequence with old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to
your foolish prejudices."
So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she stood a
tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair
flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her waist, and against it her
form stood clear in its robe of white.
"Now," said she, "you will believe me."
Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, and
drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I
suppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step or
two, and said-"Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I was
two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a man
must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know."
"But you are not my grandmother," said I.
"How do you know that?" she retorted. "I dare say you know something of
your great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that; but you know
very little about your great-grandmothers on either side. Now, to the
point. Your little sister was reading a fairy-tale to you last night."
"She was."
"When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, 'Is there a
fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, 'I suppose there is,
if one could find the way into it.'"
"I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem to
think."
"Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into Fairy Land
to-morrow. Now look in my eyes."
Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I remembered
somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I looked deeper and
deeper, till they spread around me like seas, and I sank in their
waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found myself at the window, whose
gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and where I stood gazing on a whole
heaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea,
still as death and hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around
capes and islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was no
sea, but a low bog burnished by the moon. "Surely there is such a sea
somewhere!" said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me replied-