them? You, my children? Well, well. Better than some of your elders,
perchance. You know the wood where I live; the hollow tree that will
hold five children, and Queen Mab knows how many fairies. (What a
castle it makes! And if it had but another floor put into it, with a
sloping ladder--like one of the round towers of Ireland--what a house
for children to live in! With no room for lesson-books, grown-up
people, or beds!)

"You know the way to the hazel copse, and the place where the wild
strawberries grow. You know where the wren sits on her eggs, and, like
good children, pass by with soft steps and hushed voices, that you may
not disturb that little mother. You know (for I have shown you) where
the rare fern grows--a habitat happily yet unnoted in scientific pages.
_We_ never add its lovely fronds to our nosegays, and if we move a
root it is but to plant it in another part of the wood, with as much
mystery and circumspection as if we were performing some solemn
druidical rite. It is to us as a king in hiding, and the places of its
abode we keep faithfully secret. It will be thus held sacred by us
until, with all the seed its untouched fronds have scattered, and all
the offshoots we have propagated, it shall have become as plentiful as
Heaven intends all beautiful things to be. Every one is not so
scrupulous. There are certain ladies and gentlemen who picnic near my
cottage in the hot weather, and who tell each other that they love a
wood. Most of these good people have nevertheless neither eyes nor ears
for what goes on around them, except that they hear each other, and see
the cold collation. They will picnic there summer after summer, and not
know whether they sit under oaks or ashes, beeches or elms. All birds
sing for them the same song. Tell _them_ that such a plant is rare
in the neighbourhood, that there are but few specimens of it, and it
will not long be their fault if there are any. Does any one direct them