her sunburnt face, which
looked as if the warmth of the sun were yet in it.

"Look, guest," said Dick; "doesn't it all look like one of those very
stories out of Grimm that we were talking about up in Bloomsbury? Here
are we two lovers wandering about the world, and we have come to a fairy
garden, and there is the very fairy herself amidst of it: I wonder what
she will do for us."

Said Clara demurely, but not stiffly: "Is she a good fairy, Dick?"

"O, yes," said he; "and according to the card, she would do better, if it
were not for the gnome or wood-spirit, our grumbling friend of last
night."

We laughed at this; and I said, "I hope you see that you have left me out
of the tale."

"Well," said he, "that's true. You had better consider that you have got
the cap of darkness, and are seeing everything, yourself invisible."

That touched me on my weak side of not feeling sure of my position in
this beautiful new country; so in order not to make matters worse, I held
my tongue, and we all went into the garden and up to the house together.
I noticed by the way that Clara must really rather have felt the contrast
between herself as a town madam and this piece of the summer country that
we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as
to thinness and scantiness, and went barefoot also, except for light
sandals.

The old man greeted us kindly in the parlour, and said: "Well, guests, so
you have been looking about to search into the nakedness of the land: I
suppose your illusions of last night have given way a bit before the
morning light? Do you still like, it, eh?"

"Very much," said I, doggedly; "it is one of the prettiest places on the
lower Thames."

"Oho!" said he; "so you know the Thames, do you?"

I reddened, for I saw Dick and Clara looking at me, and scarcely knew
what to say. However, since I had said in our early intercourse with my
Hammersmith friends that I had known Epping Forest, I thought a hasty
generalisation might be better in avoiding complications than a downright
lie; so I said--

"I have been in this country before; and I have been on the Thames in
those days."

"O," said the old man, eagerly, "so you have been in this country before.
Now really, don't you _find_ it (apart from all theory, you know) much
changed for the worse?"

"No, not at all," said I; "I find it much changed for the better."

"Ah," quoth he, "I fear that you have been prejudiced by some