Bildungsromans; Country life -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Pastoral fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful
clothes--a lord, presumably--lifted me into a high carved chair, and
stood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to
explain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the company
with my own tooth-brush and Harold's tables; but either they were
stupid--or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at
the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, “All
right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough for
us.” The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no share in the
conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend the
Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and he
told me what he was going to be; and then I remarked, “I suppose you
two are going to get married?” He only laughed, after the Fairy fashion.
“Because if you aren't,” I added, “you really ought to”: meaning only
that a man who discovered a Princess, living in the right sort of
Palace like this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false to all
recognised tradition.
They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pond
and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll.
I was sleepy, and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up
man put two half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he explained, of
treating the other water-babies. I was so touched by this crowning
mark of friendship that I nearly cried; and thought much more of his
generosity than of the fact that the Princess; ere she moved away,
stooped down and kissed me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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