“But she’s nice?” asked Sara anxiously.

“Oh, she’s pleasant-spoken,” said Schlorge, “and pretty.  Some like her, and some don’t.  The Plynck, here,” he spoke respectfully, though dissentingly, “thinks the sun rises and sets in her.  For myself, I like folks of a more sensible turn.”

“Even fairies?” asked Sara, half inclined to protest.

For the first time Schlorge was almost rude to her.  “Well, do you take me for a human?  And I can do something besides write poetry on rose-leaves.”  He replaced the forceps in his hair with obvious professional pride—­and, of course, when he put them in in that way, they stayed.

But Sara echoed delightedly, “On rose-leaves?”

“Well, go and see her, then,” said Schlorge, ungraciously.  Then, relenting a little, “Come on, I’ll take you—­if you’re stuck on verse-writing females.”

He took Sara by the hand, and of course his hand was kinder than his voice.  To Sara’s joy they struck into the curliest of the little paths, which slipped suddenly through a half-hidden arch in the hawthorn hedge, and then skipped confidingly right up to Avrillia’s door.  Avrillia’s house was right on the Verge, but the Verge was quite wide at this point, and very lovely.  It was more like a beach than anything else; and the sands, of course, like those of most beaches, were of gold; but instead of being bare, like most beaches, it was sprinkled quite thickly with lovely clumps of fog-bushes, which were of a different color every hour of the day and every day of the year; and the shells had stems and leaves, and were prettier even than most shells.  And Avrillia’s house had sails, instead of curtains.  Still, it was not a boat, because it had star-vines climbing all over the terrace (the flowers were of all colors, except square, and only opened in the evening) and it had the marble balcony, with the box-trees in urns.  For, without knowing it, it was Avrillia’s balcony that Sara had seen from the stump.

“Well, there’s Pirlaps,” said Schlorge, lifting his shoe politely and turning back toward the Dimplesmithy.  “He’ll tell you where to find Avrillia.”

Sara was left looking at a middle-aged fairy-gentleman with a little pointed beard, who was sitting on a sort of stool or box before an easel, hard at work.  He had on white tennis-flannels, and an odd but becoming sort of cap.  Usually Sara was very shy of strangers; but this gentleman looked so pleasant that she had almost made up her mind to speak to him when she saw Schlorge running wildly back up the path.  “Where’s a stump?” he panted.  “I forgot—­where’s a stump?”

He spoke so loudly that the gentleman in tennis-flannels heard him and looked around.  “Oh, it’s you, Schlorge,” he said.  “Why, there isn’t any stump here, you know—­but you may use my step, if you like.”

He had lovely manners, even with a plain dimplesmith like Schlorge; and he rose as he spoke, with his palette in his hand, and made a pleasant gesture to indicate that Schlorge was quite welcome to it.  But Schlorge looked at it doubtfully; and, indeed, Sara saw that it was of chocolate, and rather soft where the gentleman had been sitting on it.  “I don’t want to soil my soul,” mumbled Schlorge, standing on one foot and looking down at the sole of the other, very much agitated and embarrassed.