go on and make this into a most interesting story about all the
ordinary things that the children did,--just the kind of things you do
yourself, you know, and you would believe every word of it; and when I
told about the children's being tiresome, as you are sometimes, your
aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, "How
true!" or "How like life!" and you would see it and would very likely be
annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing things that
happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts
and uncles either are likely to write "How true!" on the edge of the
story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really
wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children
will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they
tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see
perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the
earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the
sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as
it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet
I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so
you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and
the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At
least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and
of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever
saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on business,
and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not very well.
They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house
seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one
room to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors
left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had