in both of hers and a lit face to his. After all, ten years ago
young Skelmersdale may have been a very comely youth. And once
she took his arm, and once, I think, she led him by the hand adown
the glade that the glow-worms lit.

Just how things chanced and happened there is no telling from
Mr. Skelmersdale's disarticulated skeleton of description. He gives
little unsatisfactory glimpses of strange corners and doings, of places
where there were many fairies together, of "toadstool things that
shone pink," of fairy food, of which he could only say "you should
have tasted it!" and of fairy music, "like a little musical box,"
that came out of nodding flowers. There was a great open place
where fairies rode and raced on "things," but what Mr. Skelmersdale
meant by "these here things they rode," there is no telling. Larvae,
perhaps, or crickets, or the little beetles that elude us so abundantly.
There was a place where water splashed and gigantic king-cups grew,
and there in the hotter times the fairies bathed together. There were
games being played and dancing and much elvish love-making, too,
I think, among the moss-branch thickets. There can be no doubt that
the Fairy Lady made love to Mr. Skelmersdale, and no doubt either
that this young man set himself to resist her. A time came, indeed,
when she sat on a bank beside him, in a quiet, secluded place
"all smelling of vi'lets," and talked to him of love.

"When her voice went low and she whispered," said Mr. Skelmersdale,
"and laid 'er 'and on my 'and, you know, and came close with a soft,
warm friendly way she 'ad, it was as much as I could do to keep my
'ead."

It seems he kept his head to a certain limited unfortunate extent.