She preserved a fine indifference....

And yet, although, here my story may seem to matter-of-fact persons to take a turn towards the fantastic, this was not quite all.

Nancy herself, dimly and yet uneasily, was aware that there was something else.
She was not a little girl who believed in fairies or witches or the "bogey man," or anything indeed that she could not see.

She inherited from her mother a splendid confidence in the reality, the solid, unquestioned reality of all concrete and tangible things.

She had been presented once with a fine edition of "Grimm's Fairy Tales," an edition with coloured pictures and every allure.