"Now, you needn't pretend to be so particular as all that, as if you were too grand to be rubbed by a frog. The fact is, you ought to be very much obliged to him. Suppose you could get nobody but a toad to do it, how would you like that?" There was a little pause, and then Sylvie added: "Now you may go. Be a good beetle, and don't keep your chin in the air." And then began one of those performances of humming, and whizzing, and restless banging about, such as a beetle indulges in when it has decided on flying, but hasn't quite made up its mind which way to go. At last, in one of its awkward zigzags, it managed to fly right into my face, and by the time I had recovered from the shock, the little fairy was gone. I looked about in all directions for the little creature, but there was no trace of her--and my "eerie" feeling was quite gone off, and the crickets were chirping again merrily, so I knew she was really gone. And now I've got time to tell you the rule about the crickets. They always leave off chirping when a fairy goes by, because a fairy's a kind of queen over them, I suppose; at all events, it's a much grander thing than a cricket; so whenever you're walking out, and the crickets suddenly leave off chirping, you may be sure that either they see a fairy, or else they're frightened at your coming so near. I walked on sadly enough, you may be sure. However, I comforted myself with thinking, "It's been a very wonderful afternoon, so far; I'll just go quietly on and look about me, and I shouldn't wonder if I come across another fairy somewhere." Peering about in this way, I happened to notice a plant with rounded leaves, and with queer little holes cut out in the middle of several of them. "Ah! the leaf-cutter bee," I carelessly remarked; you know I am very learned in natural history (for instance, I can always tell kittens from chickens at one glance); and I was passing on, when a sudden thought made me stoop down and examine the leaves more carefully. Then a little thrill of delight ran through me, for I noticed that the holes were all arranged so as to form letters; there were three leaves side by side, with "B," "R" and "U" marked on them, and after some search I found two more, which contained an "N" and an "O." By this time the "eerie" feeling had all come back again, and I suddenly observed that no crickets were chirping; so I felt quite sure that "Bruno" was a fairy, and that he was somewhere very near. And so indeed he was--so near that I had very nearly walked over him without seeing him; which would have been dreadful, always supposing that fairies _can_ be walked over; my own belief is that they are something of the nature of will-o'-the-wisps, and there's no walking over _them_.