in a hurry to get home, and sped on as before.
And here I may say, in parenthesis, that, when next I met him, he told me that he had remarked nothing unusual in my demeanour, and had not seen anything peculiarly grotesque in my hasty exclamation: "Sorry I can't stop to talk. You see I am flying home too."
I had made good progress, and was within a few hundred yards of my house when I became aware that I was being pursued. I heard behind me footfalls like the patter which one makes when one throws a handful of shingle upon the smooth surface of a lake; and, spinning round in my course, I confronted one of the strangest arrays that the imagination can conceive. A thousand little sprites of as many different forms were dancing in the air, giggling, smiling, playing all kinds of antics, and ever and anon bursting out into regular Homeric laughter. With one accord they beckoned me to join them, and, when I turned and did so, they flew upon me, like a swarm of bees,
