hing wonderful about it.

* * * * *

While Kathleen is wondering at the fairy palace I will explain to you
the subject which you have been wondering about. If you only knew more
we could get on with the story so much faster. It is most annoying.
And you have been brought up so well too! I don't see that it is
anybody's fault but your own. You have been wondering all along how it
was that the fairies seemed to Kathleen to be, as I said, only a
little smaller than herself, when you have always heard that fairies
were so very little.

Well, to think of your not understanding that! I am bound to say that
when I was of your age I was just as ignorant about it as you are now,
but then, children now have a good many more advantages than they had
in my day. Considering how few advantages we had, it is a great credit
to people of my age that we know anything at all, and, considering how
many of them you have, it is a disgrace to you that you do not know
everything.

When I was a child I used to read about fairies, and the book would
say that they were six inches tall, or that they were about as big as
a man's thumb, or it would tell about their sitting in flowers. And
then I would look at the pictures and they would appear to be as high
as a man's knees, or even higher. And I could not understand it. But I
made up my mind to find out about it. That is what you must do, when
there is anything that you don't understand. There are very few things
that you can't do, if you make up your mind to them, except things
that are too hard for you. I hate to have morals getting into a story
as much as you do, but that is such a good one that it might as well
go in.

Now I will tell you. Fairies can be of any size they like, and you
never can tell what size they are going to be, from one minute to
another. They can be giants, if they like. And as soon as they had
Kathleen with them they could make her of any size they liked too. So
as long as she was among them they could keep her and themselves just
the same size, or as near to it as they liked.

But when fairies are not taking the trouble to be of any particular
size--when they are letting themselves alone, as you might say--then
they are about six inches tall. And I think that is a very good size
to be. It would be better if you were of that size. You wouldn't eat
so much and you wouldn't be so much in the way, and you would be much
better-looking. Ju