Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless sleep.

The sun was high, when I looked out of the window, shining over a wide,

undulating, cultivated country. Various garden-vegetables were growing

beneath my window. Everything was radiant with clear sunlight. The

dew-drops were sparkling their busiest; the cows in a near-by field were

eating as if they had not been at it all day yesterday; the maids were

singing at their work as they passed to and fro between the out-houses:

I did not believe in Fairy Land. I went down, and found the family

already at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they sat, the

little girl came to me, and looked up in my face, as though she wanted

to say something to me. I stooped towards her; she put her arms round my

neck, and her mouth to my ear, and whispered-

"A white lady has been flitting about the house all night."

"No whispering behind doors!" cried the farmer; and we entered together.

"Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh?"

"Not one, thank you; I slept uncommonly well."

"I am glad to hear it. Come and breakfast."

After breakfast, the farmer and his son went out; and I was left alone

with the mother and daughter.

"When I looked out of the window this morning," I said, "I felt almost

certain that Fairy Land was all a delusion of my brain; but whenever I

come near you or your little daughter, I feel differently. Yet I could

persuade myself, after my last adventures, to go back, and have nothing

more to do with such strange beings."

"How will you go back?" said the woman.

"Nay, that I do not know."

"Because I have heard, that, for those who enter Fairy Land, there is no

way of going back. They must go on, and go through it. How, I do not in

the least know."

"That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to go

on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this morning

to continue my adventures."

"Will you come and see my little child's room? She sleeps in the one I

told you of, looking towards the forest."

"Willingly," I said.

So we went together, the little girl running before to open the door for

us. It was a large room, full of old-fashioned furniture, that seemed to

have once belonged to some great house.