"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost the very words
with which my dear old tutor dismissed me the morning I left college.
Never mind, the thing is done. Shall I pay you anything?"

"I do not understand."

"Any honorarium, then? Some people understand one word and not the
other." But the boy only shook his head in answer.

Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this time either
at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the hypnotic instruction in a
new language just received. Perhaps it was because my head still spun
too giddily with that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps
because I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened. But,
anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narrative,
must, alas! remain unexplained for the moment. The rug, by the way, had
completely disappeared, my friend comforting me on this score, however,
by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one whom he knew.

"We are very tidy people here, stranger," he said, "and everything
found Lying about goes back to the Palace store-rooms. You will laugh
to see the lumber there, for few of us ever take the trouble to reclaim
our property."

Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw that enchanted web
again!

When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for a time, I got up,
and having stretched and shaken my clothes into some sort of order, we
strolled down the hill and joined the light-hearted crowds that twined