“Only _one_, sir, please,” he was careful to explain. The Master kindly consented, and by great good fortune the example did not deal with a faulty boiler, nor with any other defect—but concerned itself solely with the model engine’s speed. So Edwin knew, when he had worked his sum, exactly what pace the model engine he would find at home would be good for. He worked the sum right.
Then he put his head into his desk and began again.
“Oh, good Fairy, if a sum of £4,700 is to be divided between A, B, and C,—do, do come and help me. Three-tenths of a pound is six shillings, dear Fairy—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—oh, lovely Fairy—” and so on.
But no Fairy came. And Simpkins minor whispered—
“What are you chunnering about?” and stuck a pin into Edwin’s leg. “Can’t you do the beastly example?”
Then quite suddenly Edwin knew what he had to do. He made up an example for himself. This was it.
“If 7,535 fairies were in my desk at school and I subtracted 710 and added 1,006, and the rest flew away in 783 equal gangs, how many would be left over in the desk?”
When he had worked it the answer was one. Very quickly he opened his desk again, and there was the Arithmetic Fairy, looking more lovely than ever in a rich gown of indices, lined with surds, that fell to her feet in osculating curves. In her hand, like a sceptre, shone the starry glory of the binomial theorem. But her eyes were starrier still. She smiled, but her first words were severe.
“You careless boy,” she said. “Why can’t you learn to be accurate? It’s the merest chance you got me. You should have stated your problem more clearly, and you should have said seven thousand _Arithmetic_ Fairies. Why suppose you had found one fairy in your desk, and it had been the Grammar Fairy, or the Football Fairy—what would you have done then?”
“_Is_ there a Football Fairy?” Edwin asked.
“Of course. There’s a fairy for everything you have to learn. There’s a Patience Fairy, and a Good-temper Fairy, and a Fairy to teach people to make bread, and another to teach them to make love. Didn’t you really know that?”
“No,” said Edwin, “but I say, look here——”
“I am looking,” she said, fixing her bright eyes on Edwin’s goggling ones, exactly as at their first meeting.