time, "it is because
the wymps are so much occupied in looking after their new Queen that
they have no time to play tricks on us."

"Ah," said her Majesty, smiling wisely, "does she seem happy at the
back of the sun?"

"Everybody is happy at the back of the sun, please your Majesty," said
Capricious. "They play games all day long to amuse their new Queen,
and they never quarrel except for the right to do things for her little
Majesty. If she stays there much longer it will soon be impossible to
distinguish a wymp from a fairy!"

"It is time she went home again," said the Fairy Queen, smiling wisely
for the second time. "How do the shoemaker and his wife get on without
her?"

"Their house is so quiet that the shoemaker has never made better
shoes," answered Capricious. "The shoemaker's wife, though, can do
nothing but sit out in the sunshine and wait, for she cannot bear the
silence indoors. Even wympcraft cannot make her forget everything,
your Majesty."

"Molly must certainly go home again," said the Fairy Queen; "and she
must go to-morrow morning."

Capricious sighed dismally.

"Must she really go, your Majesty?" she ventured to say; "and will the
wymps be free again to plague us with their tiresome wympish jokes?"

The Fairy Queen smiled wisely for the third time.

"Wait until to-morrow morning," she said. "You may have as good a joke
against the wymps as they have ever had against you."

That night, Molly had a dream straight from Fairyland which reminded
her that, although she had a whole palace of her own and quantities of
little subjects to do her bidding, she was really the daughter of the
shoemaker on the other side of the sun. So, when Skilful and Wilful
and Captious and Queer came to play with her in the morning, she told
them she could not be their Queen any longer, as it was time for her to
go back to the front of the sun. The four little fellows looked more
dismal than a wymp had ever been known to look before, and so did all
the wymps in Wympland as soon as they heard that their bewymping Queen
was going away from them.

"Can we do nothing to make you stop with us?" they asked her. "Have we
been too rough with you, after all? You must forgive us if we have,
for we are not accustomed to Queens, at the back of the sun. If we try
to be less noisy, will you not stay with us a little longer?"

"Dear little wymps," cried Molly; "you never tread on my toes now, nor
crumple my pinafore