eagerly at the chance of being princesses or fairies for a few hours in
their miserable lives.

When Christmas Eve came and the children flocked into the Mayor's
mansion, whether it was owing to the Costumer's art, or their own
adaptation to the characters they had chosen, it was wonderful how
lifelike their representations were. Those little fairies in their short
skirts of silken gauze, in which golden sparkles appeared as they moved
with their little funny gossamer wings, like butterflies, looked like
real fairies. It did not seem possible, when they floated around to the
music, half supported on the tips of their dainty toes, half by their
filmy purple wings, their delicate bodies swaying in time, that they
could be anything but fairies. It seemed absurd to imagine that they
were Johnny Mullens, the washerwoman's son, and Polly Flinders, the
charwoman's little girl, and so on.

The Mayor's daughter, who had chosen the character of a goose-girl,
looked so like a true one that one could hardly dream she ever was
anything else. She was, ordinarily, a slender, dainty little lady rather
tall for her age. She now looked very short and stubbed and brown, just
as if she had been accustomed to tend geese in all sorts of weather. It
was so with all the others--the Red Riding-hoods, the princesses, the
Bo-Peeps and with every one of the characters who came to the Mayor's
ball; Red Riding-hood looked round, with big, frightened eyes, all ready
to spy the wolf, and carried her little pat of butter and pot of honey
gingerly in her basket; Bo-Peep's eyes looked red with weeping for the
loss of her sheep; and the princesses swept about so grandly in their
splendid brocaded trains, and held their crowned heads so high that
people half-believed them to be true princesses.

But there never was anything like the fun at the Mayor's Christmas ball.
The fiddlers fiddled and fiddled, and the children danced and danced on
the beautiful waxed floors. The Mayor, with his family and a few grand
guests, sat on a dais covered with blue velvet at one end of the dancing
hall, and watched the sport. They were all delighted. The Mayor's eldest
daughter sat in front and clapped her little soft white hands. She was
a tall, beautiful young maiden, and wore a white dress, and a little cap
woven of blue violets on her yellow hair. Her name was Violetta.

The supper was served at midnight--and such a supper! The mountains of
pink and white ices, and th