In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless sleep.
The sun was high, when I looked out of the window, shining over a wide,
undulating, cultivated country. Various garden-vegetables were growing
beneath my window. Everything was radiant with clear sunlight. The
dew-drops were sparkling their busiest; the cows in a near-by field were
eating as if they had not been at it all day yesterday; the maids were
singing at their work as they passed to and fro between the out-houses:
I did not believe in Fairy Land. I went down, and found the family
already at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they sat, the
little girl came to me, and looked up in my face, as though she wanted
to say something to me. I stooped towards her; she put her arms round my
neck, and her mouth to my ear, and whispered-
"A white lady has been flitting about the house all night."
"No whispering behind doors!" cried the farmer; and we entered together.
"Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh?"
"Not one, thank you; I slept uncommonly well."
"I am glad to hear it. Come and breakfast."
After breakfast, the farmer and his son went out; and I was left alone
with the mother and daughter.
"When I looked out of the window this morning," I said, "I felt almost
certain that Fairy Land was all a delusion of my brain; but whenever I
come near you or your little daughter, I feel differently. Yet I could
persuade myself, after my last adventures, to go back, and have nothing
more to do with such strange beings."
"How will you go back?" said the woman.
"Nay, that I do not know."
"Because I have heard, that, for those who enter Fairy Land, there is no
way of going back. They must go on, and go through it. How, I do not in
the least know."
"That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to go
on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this morning
to continue my adventures."
"Will you come and see my little child's room? She sleeps in the one I
told you of, looking towards the forest."
"Willingly," I said.
So we went together, the little girl running before to open the door for
us. It was a large room, full of old-fashioned furniture, that seemed to
have once belonged to some great house.