"If you could just give me a useful hint or two I should be tremendously
grateful," I said. Already thousands loomed entrancingly before me. Already
I saw myself settled in that darling cottage on the windy hill above
Daccombe Wood. Already--

"I think I had better get a pencil and paper," I said. "My memory's
dreadful."

But the Fairy Queen shook her head.

"I'll write it down for you," she said, "and you can read it when I'm gone.
That's so much more fun. But I don't need paper."

She drew a tiny shining implement from her pocket and, picking up a couple
of rose-petals which had fallen upon the table, she busied herself with
them for a moment at my desk, her mouth pursed up, her brows contracted in
an expression of intense seriousness.

"There," she said, "that's that. And now show me _all_ your new clothes."

We spent quite a pleasant evening over one thing and another, and I forgot
all about the rose-leaves until after she had gone; but when I came back to
my empty sitting-room they shone in the dusk with a soft radiance which
came, I discovered, from the writing on them. It glowed like those luminous
figures on watches which were so entrancing when they first appeared. I had
never realised before that they were fairy figures.

I spread the petals out on my palm, feeling quite excited at the prospect
of making my fortune by such means, though I was a little anxious as to how