The satisfaction of spinning a fairy tale out of it for the children’s Society was only equalled by the pleasure of the original inspiration. Here, too, was a means of expressing himself he had never dreamed of; the relief was great. Moreover, it brought him into close touch with the inexhaustible reservoirs which children draw upon for their endless world of Make-Believe, and he understood that the child and the poet live in the same region. His feet were now set upon that secret path trodden by the feet of children since the world began; and, for all his burden of years, there was no telling where it might lead him. For the springs of perennial youth have their sources in that region—the youth of the spirit, with the constant flow of enthusiasm, the touch of simple, ever-living beauty, and the whole magic of vision. No one with imagination can ever become _blasé_, perhaps need ever grow old in the true sense. By this means he might at last turn his accumulated stores to some useful account. The great geysers of imagination that dry up too soon with the majority might keep bubbling for ever; and provided the pipes kept open for smaller visions, they might with time become channels for inspiration of a still higher order. His audience might grow too. ‘I’m getting on,’ he observed to Nixie a few days later; ‘getting on pretty well for an old man!’ ‘I knew you would,’ she replied approvingly. ‘Only you wasted a lot of time over it. When you came you were so old that Toby thought you were going to die, you know.’ ‘So bad as all that, was it?’ ‘H’mmmmm,’ she nodded, her blue eyes faintly troubled; ‘quite!’ Paul took her on his knee and stared at her. The world of elemental wonder came quite close. There was something of magic about the atmosphere of this child’s presence that made it possible to believe anything and everything. She embodied exquisitely so many of his dreams—those dreams of God and Nature he had lived with all those lonely years in Canadian solitudes. ‘You know, _I_ think,’ he said slowly as he watched with delight the look of tender affection upon her face, ‘that, without knowing it, you’re something of a little magician, Nixie. What do _you_ think?’ But she only laughed and wriggled on his knee. ‘Am I really?’ she said presently. ‘Then what are you, I wonder?’ ‘I used to be a Wood Cruiser,’ he replied gravely; ‘but what I am now it’s rather difficult to say. You ought to know,’ he added, ‘as you’re the magician who’s changing me.’ ‘I’ve not changed you,’ she laughed. ‘I only found you out. The day you came I saw you were simply full of our things—and that you’d be a sort of Daddy to us. And we shall want a lot more Aventures, please, as soon as ever you can write them out——’