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with belief in it. A few, to be sure, play with familiar stories, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack and the Beanstalk, Puss in Boots. But turn back a few pages and pause at No. 5, which he calls simply By the Way. A princess, wandering down a country road, stops to pass the time of day with some toadstools. That is all. There is no story: or, rather, there must be a story, only (and the same applies to The Four Ravens, No. 27) you have to make it up for yourself. Something sang in Mr. Rackham’s head—possibly Meredith’s “Let not your fair princess stray”—and the fancy grew out of it. But note how definitely he gives us what is magical, the change of the toadstools into elves; and contrariwise with what a delicate sense of mystery he treats what is ordinary—how the ploughed furrows converge towards the
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