"I strolled on in leisurely enjoyment, and at last seated myself at the
foot of a tree to rest. I was hot and tired; partly with the mid-day
heat and the atmosphere of the fair, partly with the exertion of
calculating change in the purchase of articles ranging in price from
three farthings upwards. The tree under which I sat was an old friend.
There was a hole at its base that I knew well. Two roots covered with
exquisite moss ran out from each side, like the arms of a chair, and
between them there accumulated year after year a rich, though tiny
store of dark leaf-mould. We always used to say that fairies lived
within, though I never saw anything go in myself but wood-beetles.
There was one going in at that moment.

"How little the wood was changed! I bent my head for a few seconds,
and, closing my eyes, drank in the delicious and suggestive scents of
earth and moss about the dear old tree. I had been so long parted from
the place that I could hardly believe that I was in the old familiar
spot. Surely it was only one of the many dreams in which I had played
again beneath those trees! But when I re-opened my eyes there was the
same hole, and, oddly enough, the same beetle or one just like it. I
had not noticed till that moment how much larger the hole was than it
used to be in my young days.

"'I suppose the rain and so forth wears them away in time,' I said
vaguely.

"'I suppose it does,' said the beetle politely; 'will you walk in?'

"I don't know why I was not so overpoweringly astonished as you would
imagine. I think I was a good deal absorbed in considering the size of
the hole, and the very foolish wish that seized me to do what I had