"A sturdy squire of the country party," said the King. "I am much
minded to secure the lad for an elfin page," he added aside to
Killigrew. "There's a fund of excellent humour and drollery in
those queer eyes of his! So, Sir Hobgoblin, if you are proof
against cold steel, I know not what is to be done with you. Get you
back, and devise some other mode of finding your way home to
fairyland."

Peregrine said not a word of his adventure, so that the surprise of
his family was the greater when overtures were made through Sir
Christopher Wren for his appointment as a royal page.

"I would as soon send my son at once to be a page to Beelzebub,"
returned Major Oakshott.

And though Sir Christopher did not return the answer exactly in
those terms, he would not say that the Puritan Major did not judge
rightly.



CHAPTER III: THE FAIRY KING


"She's turned her right and round about,
And thrice she blew on a grass-green horn,
And she sware by the moon and the stars above
That she'd gar me rue the day I was born."