252 WHISPERS FROM FAIRVLAND. [v.

 

fortune which seemed to have befallen poor Watkins.
But when by the concluding words of the old gentle-
man, he gathered the fact that it was (as he had
already suspected) his fate to have fallen into the
hands of Fairies, he began to feel exceedingly doubt-
ful as to his own position. It did not seem as if any
evil was intended to him, at least for the present, and
indeed the old gentleman had volunteered the state-
ment that he had taken a fancy to him. But people
who were capable of cutting off umpires’ heads, multi-
plying them many-fold, and then bedding them out
as plants in their gardens, might at any time deal in
a similarly unpleasant and singular manner with a
person who was zof an umpire. Therefore Harry
began to think that it would behove him to be careful
and cautious, lest the wrath of the Fairies should be
turned upon him. The darkest suspicion, also, arose
in his mind about the heads of the gardeners, who
were very unlikely to have been born in the condition
in which he now saw them. So, upon the whole, the
boy felt rather uncomfortable, and would sooner have
been lying in the tent on Northwell Green, or in the
playing-fields at Eton, than upon the sofa in that
magnificently furnished drawing-room.

At that moment, however, whilst he was still in a
state of perplexity and doubt as to speaking or not
speaking to the lady and gentleman, so as to call their
attention to his presence, an uncontrollable desire to
sneeze settled the point for him by causing him to
make such a noise as immediately induced both the
one and the other to turn their heads in the direction
of the window.