In this I succeeded better, and sooner, than I had ventured to hope for. The path through the wood had been made familiar to me, by many a solitary stroll, in my former visit to Elveston; and how I could have so suddenly and so entirely lost it—even though I _was_ so engrossed in thinking of Arthur and his lady-love that I heeded little else—was a mystery to me. “And this open place,” I said to myself, “seems to have some memory about it I cannot distinctly recall—surely it is the very spot where I saw those Fairy-Children! But I hope there are no snakes about!” I mused aloud, taking my seat on a fallen tree. “I certainly do _not_ like snakes—and I don’t suppose _Bruno_ likes them, either!” “No, he _doesn’t_ like them!” said a demure little voice at my side. “He’s not _afraid_ of them, you know. But he doesn’t _like_ them. He says they’re too waggly!” Words fail me to describe the beauty of the little group—couched on a patch of moss, on the trunk of the fallen tree, that met my eager gaze: Sylvie reclining with her elbow buried in the moss, and her rosy cheek resting in the palm of her hand, and Bruno stretched at her feet with his head in her lap. [Illustration: FAIRIES RESTING] “Too waggly?” was all I could say in so sudden an emergency. “I’m not praticular,” Bruno said, carelessly: “but I _do_ like straight animals best——” “But you like a dog when it wags its tail,” Sylvie interrupted. “You _know_ you do, Bruno!” “But there’s more of a dog, isn’t there, Mister Sir?” Bruno appealed to me. “_You_ wouldn’t like to have a dog if it hadn’t got nuffin but a head and a tail?” I admitted that a dog of that kind would be uninteresting. “There _isn’t_ such a dog as that,” Sylvie thoughtfully remarked. “But there _would_ be,” cried Bruno, “if the Professor shortened it up for us!” “Shortened it up?” I said. “That’s something new. How does he do it?” “He’s got a curious machine——” Sylvie was beginning to explain. “A _welly_ curious machine,” Bruno broke in, not at all willing to have the story thus taken out of his mouth, “and if oo puts in—somefinoruvver—at _one_ end, oo know—and he turns the handle—and it comes out at the uvver end, oh, ever so short!” “As short as short!” Sylvie echoed. “And one day—when we was in Outland, oo know—before we came to Fairyland—me and Sylvie took him a big Crocodile. And he shortened it up for us. And it _did_ look so funny! And it kept looking round, and saying ‘wherever _is_ the rest of me got to?’ And then its eyes looked unhappy——” “Not _both_ its eyes,” Sylvie interrupted. “Course not!” said the little fellow. “Only the eye that _couldn’t_ see wherever the rest of it had got to. But the eye that _could_ see wherever——” “How short _was_ the crocodile?” I asked, as the story was getting a little complicated. “Half as short again as when we caught it—_so_ long,” said Bruno, spreading out his arms to their full stretch.