One is always disconcerted by the ease with which foreigners talk their native tongue. The speech he heard resembled no civilized mortal language; slurred and full of hushed hisses, it was more like some dialect of Gaelic; but though he listened, hoping to catch a word which would put him on the track of what they were talking about, all he knew was that some proposal had been made and accepted. They gathered into a circle, sat down on the floor, and began to sing, softly clapping their hands to mark the measure. It was a wandering melody, a melody of no enterprise, but it must have had some charm for them, and the words, perhaps, some rustic association, for why else should these well-dressed persons sit in a ring on the floor, like peasants in a hayfield? Or were they rehearsing a masque? He had got the tune by heart and learned nothing of the words when there was a brisk tooting of trumpets. All rose to their feet. In came the trumpeters—two children, bright as parakeets in their gold—laced uniforms. The Queen followed. She was small—not taller than her trumpeters—cat-faced, and carried a knitting bag on her arm. She acknowledged her court by a ceremonious inattentive curtsy, and beckoned to a fairy who was obviously a person of importance. He hurried forward, bowing deeply, and knelt before her, holding out his hands. She looped a skein of wool over them, wound it into a ball, dropped another curtsy, more of a bob this time, and withdrew, followed by her trumpeters, whose gold-laced demeanour contrasted with her air of modest simplicity.

He was still smiling over the trumpeters when another music began—a sort of Turkish march, played by two fiddlers and a drummer. By degrees, everyone was dancing: here a minuet, there a reel, there a prancing hornpipe. It seemed they danced as the fancy took them, with little regard to the music, till with a rap on the drum it quickened and commanded them into a circle that gathered and dispersed, gathered and dispersed, faster and faster, whirling by like swallows. He watched till he could watch no more. In the anteroom the match of beggar-my-neighbour was still going on. Burrowing into his fern bed he told himself he must remember all this.

He awoke hearing an airy scuffle overhead. His attendants were flying up and down the gallery, contesting for a pair of stockings. It was gratifying to see them at last, though embarrassing to know he had been in the charge of these flippant young persons. He coughed. They descended looking as grave as tombstone cherubim. When he glanced round for his clothes, they held out new ones. The measuring had certainly not been for these. Everything was too large; the shirt pouted, the sad-green suit would have fitted a Hercules; as for the stockings, they were so inordinately long that they had to be rolled half a dozen times before they could be gartered. He was not a vain man, or luxurious, but he esteemed his legs, and wore silk stockings. These were woollen, and the word that came to his mind was ‘Pictish.’ It struck him that just as the English poets underestimated the size of fairies, fairies over-estimated the size of mortals. The reflection was philosophic, and soothed him; but not entirely. The theory of pockets had defeated the Foxcastle tailor, so he had to hang his watch on a ribbon round his neck and tuck it into the bosom of his shirt, like a loyal Jacobite locket.