Explore "Peterkin" by Mary Louisa Molesworth on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I REALLY don't quite know what made me listen to Peterkin's fancies about his invisible princess, as I got into the habit of calling her. It was partly, I suppose, because it amused me -- we had nothing much to take us up just then: there was no skating that winter, and the weather was dull and muggy -- and partly that somehow he managed to make me feel as if there might really be something in it. I suppose when anybody quite believes in a thing, it's rather catching; and Peterkin's head was so stuffed and crammed with fairy stories that at that time, I think, they were almost more real to him than common things.
He went about, dreaming of ogres and magicians, and all the rest, so much, that I scarcely think anything marvellous would have surprised him. If I had suddenly shot up to the ceiling, and called out that I had learnt how to fly, I don't believe he would have been startled; or if I had shown him a purse with a piece of gold in it, and told him that it was enchanted, and that he'd always find the money in it however often he spent it, he'd have taken it quite seriously, and been very pleased.