“Dear, beautiful Fairy,” he said, “how glad I am to see you again.”
“I’ve been with you all the time,” she said. “I wish I could do something more for you. Is there anything you want?”
The great Mathematician who was Edwin ran his hand over his thin hair.
“No,” he said, “no.” And then he remembered the school and Simpkins minor and the old desk he used to keep firework fusees in. “Unless,” he added, “you could make me young again.”
She dropped a little tear, clear as a solved problem.
“I can’t do _that_,” she said. “You can’t have _everything_. The only person who could do that for you is the Love Fairy. If you had found her instead of me you would have been always young, but you wouldn’t have invented the Hypernebular Hypothesis.”
“I suppose I shall never never find her now?” said Edwin, and as he spoke he looked out of the window to the garden, where a girl was gathering roses.
“I wonder!” said she. “The Love Fairy doesn’t live in schooldesks or books on Fourth Dimensions.”
“I wonder!” said Edwin. “Does the Love Fairy live in gardens?”
“I wonder!” echoed the Arithmetic Fairy, a little sadly, and she spread her bright wings and flew out of the open window and out of this story.
Edwin went out into the rose garden. And did he find the Love Fairy?
PS.—The Fellow of Trinity says the answer to that sum is nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and two pence and one-third of a penny.
Does the Fellow of Trinity speak the truth?
_THE TOWN IN THE LIBRARY IN THE TOWN IN THE LIBRARY_
ROSAMUND and Fabian were left alone in the library. You may not believe this; but I advise you to believe everything I tell you, because it is true. Truth is stranger than story-books, and when you grow up you will hear people say this till you grow quite sick of listening to them: you will then want to write the strangest story that ever was—just to show that _some_ stories can be stranger than truth.
Mother was obliged to leave the children alone, because Nurse was ill with measles, which seems a babyish thing for a grown-up nurse to have—but it is quite true. If I had wanted to make up anything I could have said she was ill of a broken heart or a brain-fever, which always happens in books. But I wish to speak the truth even if it sounds silly. And it _was_ measles.