"Sometimes," I answered.

"Ah! then I can put you up to a thing or two. I'm partly a fairy
myself.

"You see, it's this way," he went on hastily, seeing, I suppose, that
I looked somewhat surprised at this unexpected piece of information.
"Some hundreds of years ago--oh! ever so many--long before the present
Japanese Empire was founded, in fact, there was a man named Shin Shira
Scaramanga Manousa Yama Hawa----"

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed.

"Don't interrupt," said the little Yellow Dwarf, "it's rude, and
besides, you make me forget--I can't even think now what the rest of the
gentleman's name was--but anyhow, he was an ancestor of mine, and that
much of his name belongs to me."

"How much?" I inquired.

"Shin Shira Scaramanga Manousa Yama Hawa," repeated the Yellow Dwarf;
"but you needn't say it all," he added hastily, seeing, I suppose, that
I looked rather distressed, "Shin Shira will do; in fact, that's what I
am always called. Well, to continue. This ancestor of mine, part of
whose name I bear, did something or other to offend his
great-grandmother, who was a very influential sort of a fairy--I _could_
tell you the whole story, but it's a very long one and I'll have to tell
you that another time--and she was so angry with him that she condemned
him to appear or disappear whenever she liked and at whatever time or
place that she chose, for ever."