ng
apparently side by side; but the moment she spoke I perceived my
illusion.

"I expect, if we were anywhere about on a Sunday morning," she
surmised, with a laugh, "we should see hundreds and hundreds of
Oak-girls and Oak-boys going in schools to service."

"Dressed in green silk, with bronze boots and pink feathers--the
colours of the new oak-leaves, eh?"

"Oh, father, it would be lovely!" in a burst of ecstasy. "Oughtn't we
to go and find the way to their church?"

We might do something much less amusing. Accordingly we took the
bearings of the green spire with the skill of veteran explorers. It
lay due north, so that if we travelled by the way of the North Star we
should be certain to find it. Wheeling the Man before us, we made a
North Star track for ourselves through the underwood and over last
year's rustling beech-leaves, till Guy ceased babbling and crooning,
and dropped into a slumber, as he soon does in the fresh of the
morning. Then we had to go slowly for fear he should be wakened by the
noise of the dead wood underfoot, for, as we passed over it with wheels
and boots, it snapped and crackled like a freshly-kindled fire. It was
a relief to get at last to the soft matting of brown needles and cones
under the Needle-trees, for there we could go pretty quickly without
either jolting him or making a racket.

We went as far as we were able that day, and we searched in glade and
lawn, in coppice and dingle, but never a trace could we find of the
sylvan minster where the Oak-people worship. As we wandered through
the Forest we came upon a number of notice boards nailed high up on the
trunks of various trees, but when W. V. discovered that these only
repeated the same stern legend: "Caution. Persons breaking, climbing
upon, or otherwise damaging," she indignantly resented this incessant
intrusion on the innocent enjoyment of free foresters. How much nicer
it would have been if there had been a hand on one of these repressive
boards, with the inscription: "This way to the North Star Church;" or,
if a caution was really necessary for some of the people who entered
the Forest, to say: "The public are requested not to disturb the Elves,
Birch-ladies, and Oak-men;" but of course the most delightful thing
would be to have a different fairy-tale written up in clear letters on
each of the boards, and a seat close by where one could rest and read
it comfortably.

I told her there were several forests I had