“I was roused from these recollections by the pleasure of getting into the wood.

“If I have a stronger predilection than my love for toys, it is my love for woods, and, like the other, it dates from childhood.  It was born and bred with me, and I fancy will stay with me till I die.  The soothing scents of leaf-mould, moss, and fern (not to speak of flowers)—­the pale green veil in spring, the rich shade in summer, the rustle of the dry leaves in autumn, I suppose an old woman may enjoy all these, my dears, as well as you.  But I think I could make ’fairy jam’ of hips and haws in acorn cups now, if any child would be condescending enough to play with me. “This wood, too, had associations.

“I strolled on in leisurely enjoyment, and at last seated myself at the foot of a tree to rest.  I was hot and tired; partly with the mid-day heat and the atmosphere of the fair, partly with the exertion of calculating change in the purchase of articles ranging in price from three farthings upwards.  The tree under which I sat was an old friend.  There was a hole at its base that I knew well.  Two roots covered with exquisite moss ran out from each side, like the arms of a chair, and between them there accumulated year after year a rich, though tiny store of dark leaf-mould.  We always used to say that fairies lived within, though I never saw anything go in myself but wood-beetles.  There was one going in at that moment.

“How little the wood was changed!  I bent my head for a few seconds, and, closing my eyes, drank in the delicious and suggestive scents of earth and moss about the dear old tree.  I had been so long parted from the place that I could hardly believe that I was in the old familiar spot.  Surely it was only one of the many dreams in which I had played again beneath those trees!  But when I re-opened my eyes there was the same hole, and, oddly enough, the same beetle or one just like it.  I had not noticed till that moment how much larger the hole was than it used to be in my young days.

“‘I suppose the rain and so forth wears them away in time,’ I said vaguely.

“‘I suppose it does,’ said the beetle politely; ‘will you walk in?’

“I don’t know why I was not so overpoweringly astonished as you would imagine.  I think I was a good deal absorbed in considering the size of the hole, and the very foolish wish that seized me to do what I had often longed to do in childhood, and creep in.  I had so much regard for propriety as to see that there was no one to witness the escapade.  Then I tucked my skirts round me, put my spectacles into my pocket for fear they should get broken, and in I went.

“I must say one thing.  A wood is charming enough (no one appreciates it more than myself), but, if you have never been there, you have no idea how much nicer it is inside than on the surface.  Oh, the mosses—­the gorgeous mosses!  The fretted lichens!  The fungi like flowers for beauty, and the flowers like nothing you have ever seen!