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“Hullo! Are you the hern my schoolbook? Or! Oh! Would you likewords, and gloss’ry, and a fellow on the front, see?”

The boy held up a large voluoblin e needle, every child to pay attention and not pull faces Around the Nålegoblin’s huge bullfrog head the title danced: Carolingus Cru a Sed)

“I’ll take socks!” chirped the er to ot any nuts in it No soap, please”

Mallow sht not to sell their textbooks, she wagered he would get top ain and she hadn’t the faintest idea what Fairy educations were made of She had tutored a bee-nyht their own She ruood, sturdy mittens, which she handed over to the wide-eyed boy He took thelance before shoving theback to his athered to see if he’d pull it off They welco over the woolen prize

Nevertheless, when the faan to approach, no one kept an empty seat for Mallow, least of all the small, helpless, and too clever by half Fairy or hisout the aving their little woad-painted arecoaches pulled into Winesap Station and one by one they departed, drawn by alligators, llas around their eyes The World’s Foul would begin in a fortnight, and King Goldiven the up a spray of mud

Finally, Mallow alone reun to set the sky for her supper Idly, she opened Carolingus Cru Crea Beer, said another On Acquiring Hu Unseelies Alone Her ink-stained and page-chapped finger rested in the crease of: On Being Last Man Out

“Happens to everyone,” Carolingus gru with life froe, his spectacles a pair of perfectly round cat’s eyes, their slitted pupils glaring at the i First Man In, and thu for his tardiness A Fairy must make her oay in the world, for the world will never make way for her That, incidentally, is the First Theore Physicks, which you’ll learn all about when you’re older and don’t care anymore”

Over the Nålegoblin’s raspy voice, Mallow could hear a carriage approaching It clopped up to the station—a black iron horse whose belly swelled very wide and large indeed and had tall, red-curtained here its ribs ought to have been Its head curved with terrible grace and nobility, itslike fireplace pokers, its nose aflaht, for she did so love iron creatures, and reached out to pat its decidedly un-velvet nose

“That’ll bevoice, and Mallo that she was not alone on the platforainst a cheerful lamppost a little ways away He had not been there before, she felt certain, he simply had not He wore a neat, triht, had wicked silvery eyes, and a dashing black velvet coat, the color of the horse and the lamppost and her ducks In the center of his flahter’s key pinned the silk in place

“Mabry Muscat,” he said finally, by way of introducing himself “Your servant”

“Oh, I doubt it,” said Mallow, but not unkindly One cannot live in Fairyland too long, even closed up in a country house with hairpins for co that Fairies like little better than to leap headfirst into dramas of the first order, to make trouble if they’ve a mind, love if they can, and mischief at a

ny cost “But my name is Mallow”

“Listen to all those Ms!” Mabry ently: “Oh, Mallow Met a Marvelous Man, by the name of Mabry Muscat…”

“Listen,” Mallow interrupted “I haven’t any interest in following you to a stash of gold in the hills or dancing at a Fairy ball or answering riddles or ible Fairy dukes who have a castle just on the other side of a curtain of ician—mostly—and I am on my way to the Foul like everyone else Don’t try to charirl”

“Those are ed the subject as though she had said nothing at all “Do you ad