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Her small charge, Anthony, aged four years, slowly and carefully summed her up, weighed her in the balance and soon found himself wanting, wanting to show her everything he possessed and to give her her choice of it; to tell her all his secrets; to show her all those hidden, and by others undiscovered, places in the park and in the remoter recesses of the house, which were inhabited by friends or by enemies of his; the lovely charming fairies; the intriguing and, on the whole, agreeable, if somewhat uncertain, gnomes; objectionable wolves who pretended to be grandmothers and proved to be neither grand nor mothers; giants whom one could, in the rôle of Jack the Giant Killer, defeat and slay with comparative ease, in broad daylight, bien entendu, but which were not so good when the shades of night were falling fast; homes, resorts and meeting-places, of creatures of myth and legend and lore, some completely of his own invention and imagination. Creatures so much more real than uninterested and uninteresting people like nurses, nursery-maids, butlers, footmen, gardeners, game-keepers and other such humans, dull and adult.