Toby's ear,
suddenly the lights went out and you could have heard a pin drop.

"Now then! now then!" whispered Mr. Toby, in great excitement. "Now
you'll see! Watch the curtain! It's going up!"

From down there in that dark trench came the sound of a soft twittery
kind of music, and at the same time the painted wall that Freddie had
been looking at was rising! going up! And it went on up and up out of
sight into the ceiling, and there behind it, in a dim light, there
behind it, mysterious and fearsome and delicious,--Well, there behind it
was Fairyland. Just Fairyland.

I can't describe it to you. Freddie never forgot it. If you haven't seen
Hanlon's Superba, in some old Gaunt Street Theatre or other, on a
Saturday afternoon, with the galleries wild with boys, you have not
lived. When Freddie tried to tell his mother and his father about it
that night, it was such a whirling mass of wonders and glories that they
could not make head nor tail of it. It is useless to speak of the Fairy
Queen in her glittering white, coming to the rescue in the nick of time
with her diamond sceptre, or of the horrible demons, or the trouble and
excitement they made for everybody, or of the beautiful young lady
who--and such leapings and twistings and climbings and tumblings as no
mere human beings with bones in them could ever have performed--it is no
use; it is best not to try to describe it. But there was one part
which, although it may seem to you the most unlikely thing in the world,
really had a good deal to do with Freddie afterwards. There was the same
man whose picture he had seen outside on the signboard; and he could
climb straight walls and leap through high windows and tumble across
floors in a way which passed belief; but there was one thing he could
not do; he could not talk; he never spoke a word from beginning to end.
Once, after having escaped from a parcel of wicked red imps, he sat
down, tired out and starved to death, before a table loaded with food,
and he commenced to make a hearty meal; but just as he was about to
sample each plate it disappeared, vanished, completely out of sight,
right under his nose. His distress was pitiable, and Freddie thought it
cruel of everybody to laugh, as everybody did. On his plate were
sausages, and he nearly got them; but just as he thought he had them,
they actually jumped off the table and ran along the floor and up the
wall; and the poor man had to climb the wall after them, which