t shop-windows, looking at the
different nests and saying, "Not my colour, my dear," and "How would
that do with a soft lining?" and "But will it wear?" and "What hideous
trimming!" and so on.

The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the first
things the baby does is to sign to you to dance to him and then to cry
when you do it. They hold their great balls in the open air, in what
is called a fairy-ring. For weeks afterward you can see the ring on the
grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by waltzing
round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside the ring, and
these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten to clear away.
The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little
people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were they not
so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment of the opening
of the gates. David and I once found a fairy-ring quite warm.

But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes
place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to
close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at
six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to get
begun half an hour earlier.

If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the famous
Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds of
lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing their
wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform, holding
up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying winter
cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where they put
on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps, the flowers
streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always welcome because
they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab at the head of it,
and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who carries a dandelion on
which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the time.

The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made
of chestnut-blossom. The way the fairy-servants do is this: The men,
scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branches, and the
blossom falls like snow. Then the lady servants sweep it together by
whisking their skirts until it is exactly like a table-cloth, and that
is how they get th