Chapter 16 - Page 2

to get over a meeting.

With this object I purposely made a considerable circuit on my way to
the Hall (as we called the Earl's house): "and if I could only manage
to lose my way a bit," I thought to myself, "that would suit me capitally!"

In this I succeeded better, and sooner, than I had ventured to hope for.
The path through the wood had been made familiar to me, by many a
solitary stroll, in my former visit to Elveston; and how I could have
so suddenly and so entirely lost it--even though I was so engrossed in
thinking of Arthur and his lady-love that I heeded little else--was a
mystery to me. "And this open place," I said to myself, "seems to have
some memory about it I cannot distinctly recall--surely it is the very
spot where I saw those Fairy-Children! But I hope there are no snakes
about!" I mused aloud, taking my seat on a fallen tree. "I certainly
do not like snakes--and I don't suppose Bruno likes them, either!"

"No, he doesn't like them!" said a demure little voice at my side.
"He's not afraid of them, you know. But he doesn't like them.
He says they're too waggly!"

Words fail me to describe the beauty of the little group--couched on a
patch of moss, on the trunk of the fallen tree, that met my eager gaze:
Sylvie reclining with her elbow buried in the moss, and her rosy cheek
resting in the palm of her hand, and Bruno stretched at her feet with
his head in her lap.

"Too waggly?" was all I could say in so sudden an emergency.

"I'm not praticular," Bruno said, carelessly: "but I do like straight
animals best--"

"But you like a dog when it wags its tail, Sylvie interrupted.
"You know you do, Bruno!"

"But there's more of a dog, isn't there, Mister Sir?" Bruno appealed to me.
"You wouldn't like to have a dog if it hadn't got nuffin but a head and
a tail?"

I admitted that a dog of that kind would be uninteresting.

"There isn't such a dog as that," Sylvie thoughtfully remarked.

"But there would be," cried Bruno, "if the Professor shortened it up
for us!"

"Shortened it up?" I said. "That's something new. How does he do it?"

"He's got a curious machine "Sylvie was beginning to explain.

"A welly curious machine," Bruno broke in, not at all willing to have
the story thus taken out of his mouth, "and if oo puts
in--some-finoruvver--at one end, oo know and he turns the handle--and
it comes out at the uvver end, oh, ever so short!"

"As short as short! "Sylvie echoed.

"And one day when we was in