"Not particularly, but you do get numb standing so long on one leg,"
and he flapped his arms vigorously just as the cabmen do before they
drive off. Maimie was quite surprised to see that a number of other
tall trees were doing the same sort of thing and she stole away to the
Baby Walk and crouched observantly under a Minorca Holly which
shrugged its shoulders but did not seem to mind her.

She was not in the least cold. She was wearing a russet-coloured
pelisse and had the hood over her head, so that nothing of her showed
except her dear little face and her curls. The rest of her real self
was hidden far away inside so many warm garments that in shape she
seemed rather like a ball. She was about forty round the waist.

There was a good deal going on in the Baby Walk, when Maimie arrived
in time to see a magnolia and a Persian lilac step over the railing
and set off for a smart walk. They moved in a jerky sort of way
certainly, but that was because they used crutches. An elderberry
hobbled across the walk, and stood chatting with some young quinces,
and they all had crutches. The crutches were the sticks that are tied
to young trees and shrubs. They were quite familiar objects to
Maimie, but she had never known what they were for until to-night.

She peeped up the walk and saw her first fairy. He was a street boy
fairy who was running up the walk closing the weeping trees. The way
he did it was this, he pressed a spring in the trunk and they shut
like umbrellas, deluging the little plants beneath with snow. "Oh,
you naughty, naughty child!" Maimie cried indignantly, for she knew
what it was to have a dripping umbrella about your ears.

Fortunately the mischievous fellow was out of earshot, but the