accordingly added ourselves to the party, just in time to join the
cast of Phillis' next production. This was an ambitious but complicated
drama of an allegorical type, in which Robin appeared--not for the first
time, evidently--as a boy called Henry, and Phillis doubled the parts of
Henry's mother and a fairy. These two _roles_ absorbed practically the
whole of what is professionally known as "the fat" of the piece, and the
other members of the company were relegated--to their ill-disguised
relief--to parts of purely nominal importance.

The curtain rose (if I may use the expression) upon Henry's humble home,
where Henry was discovered partaking of breakfast (fir-cones). He
complained bitterly to his mother of the hardship of _(a)_ early rising,
_(b)_ going to school, and _(c)_ enduring chastisement when he got
there. The next scene revealed him in class, where the schoolmaster
(Dolly, assiduously prompted by Phillis) asked him a series of
questions, which he answered so incorrectly as to incur the extreme
penalty of "the muckle tawse." (Here what textual critics term "internal
evidence of a later hand" peeped out unmistakably.) The punishment
having been duly inflicted by Dolly with a rug-strap, Henry retired,
suffused with tears, to "a mountain-top," where he gave vent to a series
of bitter reflections on the hardness of his lot and the hollowness of
life in general.

He must have "gagged" unduly here, for presently he was cut short by a
stern admonition to "wish for a fairy."

"I wish for a fairy," said Henry dutifully.

Phillis, given her cue at last, pirouetted before him with outstretched
skirts.

"Go on!" she whispered excitedly. "Say, 'I wish that all Pain was
Pleasure and all Pleasure Pain.'"

"Oh, sorry!" said Henry. "I wish that all Pain was Pleasure and Pleasure
Pain."

"Have then thy wish!" announced the fairy solemnly, and fluttered away.

The drama thereafter pursued a remorselessly logical and improving
course. Having got his wish, the luckless Henry found that his only
moments of pleasure were those during which he was enduring the tawse,
getting out of bed on a cold morning, or doing something equally
unpleasant. On the other hand, his comfortable bed had become so painful
that he could only obtain rest by filling it with stones; and his
matutinal porridge was only made palatable by the addition of a handful
of gravel.

After a fruitless interview with the family physician (Captain Dermott