"Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides,
I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve;
and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know."

"But you are not my grandmother," said I.

"How do you know that?" she retorted. "I dare say you know
something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back
than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers
on either side. Now, to the point. Your little sister was
reading a fairy-tale to you last night."

"She was."

"When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, `Is
there a fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, `I
suppose there is, if one could find the way into it.'"

"I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem
to think."

"Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into
Fairy Land to-morrow. Now look in my eyes."

Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I
remembered somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I
looked deeper and deeper, till they spread around me like seas,
and I sank in their waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found
myself at the window, whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and