p winking, and then you know for
certain that they are fairies.

There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a
famous gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called. Once
twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure. They were a girls'
school out for a walk with the governess, and all wearing hyacinth
gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her mouth, and then they
all stood still on an empty bed and pretended to be hyacinths.
Unfortunately, what the governess had heard was two gardeners coming to
plant new flowers in that very bed. They were wheeling a handcart with
flowers in it, and were quite surprised to find the bed occupied. "Pity
to lift them hyacinths," said the one man. "Duke's orders," replied the
other, and, having emptied the cart, they dug up the boarding-school and
put the poor, terrified things in it in five rows. Of course, neither
the governess nor the girls dare let on that they were fairies, so they
were carted far away to a potting-shed, out of which they escaped in the
night without their shoes, but there was a great row about it among the
parents, and the school was ruined.

As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they are
the exact opposite of our houses. You can see our houses by day but you
can't see them by dark. Well, you can see their houses by dark, but you
can't see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I never
heard of anyone yet who could see night in the daytime. This does not
mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as day has,
but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours
with a light behind them. The palace is entirely built of many-coloured
glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, but the
queen sometimes complains because the common people will peep in to see
what she is doing. They are very inquisitive folk, and press quite hard
against the glass, and that is why their noses are mostly snubby. The
streets are miles long and very twisty, and have paths on each side made
of bright worsted. The birds used to steal the worsted for their nests,
but a policeman has been appointed to hold on at the other end.

One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they
never do anything useful. When the first baby laughed for the first
time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping
about. That was the beginning of fairies. T