“Oh, good Fairy! One-two-three-four-five-six-seven; do come and help me! Eight-nine-ten-eleven! Beautiful, dear, kind, lovely fairy! Nine nines are eighty-one! Dear fairy, do come! Seven million two hundred thousand six hundred and fifty-nine! I will always love you if you will come to me now. Three-sevenths of five-ninths of five-twelfths of sixteen-fiftieths. You were so kind the other day. Two and two are four, and three are seven! Do come now—you’ve no idea what an awful mess you’ve got me into. Seven nines are sixty-three—though I know you meant it kindly. Dear Fairy. Thirteen from thirty-seven leaves twenty-four. Do come and see what a hole I’m in—do come—and the product will give you the desired result!” Edwin stopped, out of breath. He looked round him for the Fairy. But his room, with the water dripping from the roof and the wet towels and basins on the floor, was not a fairy-like place. Edwin saw, with a sigh, that it was no go. “I’ll have another go in prep to-morrow,” he said. This he did. The Mathematical Master was pleased with himself that day because he had succeeded in preventing his best boy from yielding to the allurements of the Head-master and the Classical side. Of course his class knew at once what kind of temper the Mathematical Master was in—you know we always know that—and Edwin ventured to ask that the examples that day might be about a model steam engine. “Only _one_, sir, please,” he was careful to explain. The Master kindly consented, and by great good fortune the example did not deal with a faulty boiler, nor with any other defect—but concerned itself solely with the model engine’s speed. So Edwin knew, when he had worked his sum, exactly what pace the model engine he would find at home would be good for. He worked the sum right. Then he put his head into his desk and began again. “Oh, good Fairy, if a sum of £4,700 is to be divided between A, B, and C,—do, do come and help me. Three-tenths of a pound is six shillings, dear Fairy—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—oh, lovely Fairy—” and so on. But no Fairy came. And Simpkins minor whispered— “What are you chunnering about?” and stuck a pin into Edwin’s leg. “Can’t you do the beastly example?” Then quite suddenly Edwin knew what he had to do. He made up an example for himself. This was it. “If 7,535 fairies were in my desk at school and I subtracted 710 and added 1,006, and the rest flew away in 783 equal gangs, how many would be left over in the desk?” When he had worked it the answer was one. Very quickly he opened his desk again, and there was the Arithmetic Fairy, looking more lovely than ever in a rich gown of indices, lined with surds, that fell to her feet in osculating curves. In her hand, like a sceptre, shone the starry glory of the binomial theorem. But her eyes were starrier still. She smiled, but her first words were severe.